Literotica Cemetary

[JohnnySavage]

Ben Ali, 82, founder of Ben's Chili Bowl diner

Ben Ali, 82, founder of Ben's Chili Bowl diner, a landmark in Washington's black business and entertainment district and a frequent stop for politicians and celebrities, died Wednesday of heart failure in Washington.
Mr. Ali opened the restaurant with his wife, Virginia, in an old movie house in 1958, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and integrating public schools. It became a longtime fixture in the black business community, serving bowls of chili and its trademark chili-covered half-smokes.

The smothered sausages became Washington's answer to the Philly cheesesteak when rivalries flared between the Washington Redskins and the Eagles.

Mr. Ali was an immigrant from Trinidad, who moved to Washington to study at Howard University's medical and dental schools. He withdrew after injuring his back. The couple opened the restaurant on U Street. Music greats Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole were known to visit Ben's.

Bill Cosby was a favorite guest, as well as President Obama in January. After the 2008 election, Mr. Ali put up a sign: "Who eats free at Ben's: Bill Cosby - The Obama Family."

The restaurant survived tumultuous times, including the 1968 riots after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Ben's remained open, serving both protesters and police.

In recent years, despite heart problems, Mr. Ali continued to visit the diner each month, his wife said. The Chili Bowl, she said, will be open for years to come. - AP

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Irish Boy Band Star Dies on Vacation

In what's being called a random and "tragic" death with no signs of foul play involved, 33-year-old Irish boy band member Stephen Gately died while on vacation in Spain. Gately was a member of the Irish boy band Boyzone who made headlines when he came out as gay a decade ago.

Gerald Kean, a Gately family friend in Ireland, said Sunday the singer died of natural causes, without identifying them.

"There's no foul play involved, and it's not suicide. It's just a tragic accident is what we've been told, and we're happy that that is correct information," Kean said. "There is nothing untoward. It's not drugs, we don't believe. It's not suicide. It's not murder. It's not a fight. That's what we've been told."

Kean said an autopsy was expected to be conducted Tuesday.

Gately and his partner Andrew Cowles, who were wed in a civil union in 2006, were in Mallorca together, the band's statement said.

"At present we don't have too many details," the statement said. Members of the group were expected to arrive at Palma de Mallorca international airport Sunday afternoon.

Spanish police said they were called to a house near Port d'Andratx on the western tip of the island on Saturday afternoon.

The cause of death was unknown and there were no signs of violence, a police spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in keeping with police rules. He said there was likely to be an autopsy.

The house, situated on an exclusive tree-lined seafront street, overlooks a rocky bay reputed to have some of the best sunset views on Spain's favorite holiday island.

By midday Sunday journalists had begun to gather outside the quiet, seaside building with several vacation apartments.

Boyzone members Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch said they were "completely devastated by the loss of our friend and brother, Stephen."

"We have shared such wonderful times together over the years and were all looking forward to sharing many more. Stephen was a beautiful person in both body and spirit. He lit up our lives and those of the many friends he had all over the world. Our love and sympathy go out to Andrew and Stephen's family. We love you and will miss you forever, 'Steo'," their statement said.

Boyzone was a U.K. hitmaker in the 1990s and announced a comeback tour at the end of last year. Gately also had released several solo singles and appeared in stage musicals, including "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

He revealed his sexual orientation to a British newspaper in 1999.

Elton John said Sunday that he and his partner, David Furnish, were "stunned by this tragedy."

"Stephen was the kindest, gentlest soul. We send our love and condolences to his partner Andy and to all his friends everywhere," John said in a statement.

Boyzone was one of the biggest acts to come out of Ireland in the 1990s. Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Gately's death was "a huge tragedy to Irish entertainment, Irish music and further afield as well."

"Boyzone and Stephen, they've all been part of Irish life and far wider than that, the last 15 years, and so successful, so it's a huge, huge tragedy. It's so sad," Ahern said.

Boyzone sold millions of records and topped the British charts with six No. 1 singles during the 1990s, including "All That I Need" and a cover of the Bee Gees' "Words."

The group was formed in 1993 by impresario Louis Walsh, who placed an ad in the press announcing auditions for Ireland's first boy band. Among the unsuccessful hopefuls was actor Colin Farrell.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Jansen, winner of Thomson game, dies

SAN FRANCISCO -- Larry Jansen, who was synonymous with Giants pitching excellence as a player and coach, died last Saturday at his home in Verboort, Ore. He was 89.

Jansen twice won 20 games while performing for the then-New York Giants from 1947-54 and received the decision in Game 3 of the 1951 National League playoffs against the Brooklyn Dodgers, which Bobby Thomson ended with his legendary home run.

Jansen also served briefly as the Giants' pitching coach in 1954, when they won the World Series, and continuously from 1961-71, after the franchise moved to San Francisco. There, he worked with future Hall of Famers Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry and 1967 Cy Young Award winner Mike McCormick.

"He was one of my favorites," Perry said Monday night.

"I remember him being a kind individual and his best interests seemed to be your best interests," McCormick said.

Jansen made an immediate impression with a remarkable rookie season in 1947, finishing 21-5 to post an NL-best .808 winning percentage. He averaged more than 17 wins per season over the next three years before leading the league in wins with a 23-11 record in 1951.

During that year's World Series against the New York Yankees, Jansen was deeply involved in history -- or trivia, depending on your point of view. He allowed Mickey Mantle's first World Series hit and threw the final pitch Joe DiMaggio saw as an active player.

The right-hander spent three more years with the Giants before concluding his active career with Cincinnati in 1956. He retired with a 122-89 mark, a 3.58 ERA and 17 shutouts.

Jansen's 33-year coaching career was highlighted by his 11 seasons overseeing San Francisco's staff. His mainstays included Marichal, who won 20 games six times; Perry, who accumulated the first 134 of his 314 career wins as a Giant; and McCormick, who remained the Giants' lone Cy Young recipient until Tim Lincecum captured the award last year.

Under Jansen, San Francisco ranked third or better in ERA six times from 1961-68 and led the NL with a 2.92 ERA in 1967. The 1968 staff amassed 20 shutouts, a San Francisco-era record which this year's team challenged by totaling a Major League-high 18.

Perry credited Jansen with teaching him the hard slider he frequently used. Having attended an offseason banquet in Raleigh, N.C., with Ted Williams, who told him that the slider was the toughest pitch for him to hit, Perry reported to Spring Training in 1964 intent on learning one. Jansen accelerated his education. "He worked with me practically every day," Perry said.

Perry spent parts of his first two Giants seasons in Triple-A, but Jansen didn't let him think like a Minor Leaguer. "I'd come back and he'd say, 'You're going to make it this time. You're going to get your chance. Be ready.' " Perry cemented his status as a big leaguer in 1964 by pitching 10 shutout innings to win the famed 23-inning nightcap of a May 31 doubleheader at Shea Stadium. "I got my chance in that doubleheader in New York and I was ready," Perry said.

McCormick already was a polished Major League pitcher when Jansen began working with him. "He watched when you were getting out of sync and worked on that more than on any particular pitch, at least in my case," McCormick said.

McCormick's Cy Young path was anything but direct. He owned a pedestrian 4-3 record in early June before winning eight consecutive decisions. As he did with Perry, Jansen helped McCormick remain positive. "He was encouraging," said McCormick, who finished 22-10. "That year started kind of funky for me, but he was very supportive."

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Blue Cheer Founder Dickie Peterson Dies at 61

Dickie Peterson, bassist and frontman for legendary heavy metal pioneers Blue Cheer, died Monday, Oct. 12, at the age of 61. Peterson, who founded the proto-metal outfit in 1967 in the Bay Area, passed away in Germany after battling liver cancer, according to Blabbermouth.

Influenced by the era's heavy blues innovators Cream and Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer made its first impact in early 1968 when it released its debut album 'Vincebus Eruptum.' A roaring opposite to Haight Ashbury's flower power, Peterson stood in stark contrast to San Francisco based bands like the Grateful Dead.

Named for a potent strain of acid, Blue Cheer's proto metal actually produced a chart hit when its rendition of Eddie Cochran's 'Summertime Blues' made it all the way to No. 11 on the Billboard charts. Jim Morrison once called the power trio "The single most powerful band I've ever seen." Live, they were the first band ever listed in the 'Guinness Book of World Records' as "Loudest Band in the World," establishing a precedent which was eventually eclipsed by Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple.

Despite the fact that Blue Cheer, which also initially included drummer Paul Whaley and guitarist Lee Stephens, was the first American band to use Marshall amplifiers, their impact was endured even if the band didn't last. The band called it a day in 1972, however Peterson resuscitated the group 1984 for a 10-year run and reignited it in 1999 for regular touring. In 2007, Blue Cheer recorded its first new studio release in 15 years, 2007's 'What Doesn't Kill You ...,' and continued to tour the globe.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Vandenbroucke Found Dead in His Room

BRUSSELS (Oct. 13) - Frank Vandenbroucke, a former winner of the Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris-Nice cycling races before his career was marred by a doping scandal, has died of a lung embolism. He was 34.

"An athlete with a brilliant but too short career has left us," Laurent De Backer, head of the Belgian cycling federation said Tuesday.

Vandenbroucke was on holiday in Senegal when he was discovered dead in his room.

Vandenbroucke was always considered a great talent but his potential was hampered by personal problems. In 1998 he won the weeklong Paris-Nice spring race and a year later the oldest and one of the toughest classics on the calendar - Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

He was first involved in a doping scandal in 199,9 and in 2002 doping products were found at his home. An initial conviction was overturned in 2007, the same year he tried to commit suicide.

Vandenbroucke was eager to resume racing next year, but could not find a team.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Los Angeles Punk Pioneer and Author Brendan Mullen Dies at 60

Brendan Mullen, a hugely influential figure in the Los Angeles punk scene of the late '70s and early '80s, died Monday after suffering a stroke at the age of 60, according to the Los Angeles Times. As the owner of famed venue the Masque, Mullen provided the stage for the first shows for a who's who of L.A. punk bands, including X, the Dickies, Fear and the Go-Go's.

Originally from Scotland, Mullen moved from London to L.A. in 1973. He opened the venue in 1977 on Hollywood Boulevard after reportedly looking for a spot to bang his own drum, and bells, gongs, and other percussion instruments. Though the club only lasted until '79, it became a part of L.A. lore, also hosting the Dead Kennedys, the Germs, and the Weirdos during its memorable two-year run.

After the club's demise, Mullen became a fixture in the L.A. music community, going onto DJ and book gigs at Club Lingerie and the Variety Arts Center. As impressive as the list of acts who played the Masque is, those he went on to book in subsequent years would make the greatest festival lineup of all time, including Hole, Guns 'N' Roses, Husker Du, Jane's Addiction, Black Flag, Sonic Youth and more. He also could lay claim to introducing L.A. to R.E.M., Soundgarden, the Replacements and the Flaming Lips, bringing all of them in for their debut L.A. gigs.

In later years Mullen turned his attention to chronicling and archiving the L.A. punk world, writing about his own history and that of the scene helped bring to life in 'Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley,' 'We Got the Neutron Bomb,' an oral history of Jane's Addiction called 'Whores' and 'Lexicon Devils,' about the Germs.

He is survived by his companion, Kateri Butler, and three sisters. Plans for funeral services are pending.

 

[Igor_1066]

Al Martino

October 15, 2009
Al Martino, ‘Godfather’ Singer, Dies
By A. E. VELEZ

Al Martino, the baritone renowned for a string of hits, including the sentimental ballads “Spanish Eyes,” “Volare” and “Speak Softly Love,” and for his role as the wedding singer in “The Godfather,” died Tuesday in Springfield, Pa., The Associated Press reported. He was 82.

Mr. Martino was one of the most recognizable Italian-American pop singers of the 1950s and ’60s. Influenced by Perry Como and Al Jolson, he had a career that spanned nearly five decades. He leaves behind several celebrated songs, including his breakthrough hit, “Here in My Heart,” for the small BBS label. Released in 1952, it rose to No. 1 in the United States and later became the very first No. 1 single in Britain. It also won him a contract with Capitol Records.

Mr. Martino had an influential and encouraging childhood friend in Mario Lanza, the American opera singer who became a Hollywood movie star in the 1940s and ’50s. Lanza was slated to record “Here in My Heart” himself but dropped his plans after Mr. Martino explained that his own debut recording would be neglected if he did.

In the mid-1960s, with rock music dominating the charts, Mr. Martino and his “olive oil voice” (in the words of a character in “The Godfather”) helped reintroduce classic pop romanticism to trans-Atlantic audiences. Between 1963 and 1967 he had nine Top 40 singles, of which the most enduring proved to be “Spanish Eyes.” The vocal version of a song composed and first recorded by Bert Kaempfert as “Moon Over Naples,” it became something of a standard and was later recorded by both Elvis Presley and Wayne Newton. Mr. Martino returned to the charts in 1975, when he recorded a disco version of the Italian singer Domenico Modugno’s signature song, “Volare.”

One of the most prominent of the old-guard Italian-American romantic crooners, Mr. Martino found his image permanently embedded in pop culture when he played the singer Johnny Fontane in Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated 1972 movie, “The Godfather.” (He would reprise the role in 1990 in “The Godfather: Part III.”)

The character, loosely based on Frank Sinatra, is a famous crooner and washed-up movie star. There are four instances in the movie in which Don Vito Corleone, Fontane’s godfather and the head of a major Mafia crime family, intervenes to help his career, most memorably in the scene in which a horse’s head is place in the bed of a movie producer who would not hire Fontane.

In a singing career that can best be described as a roller coaster, Mr. Martino encountered both highs and lows. In 1972 he stormed off the stage of the Persian Room at New York’s Plaza Hotel with some bitter remarks about the city and canceled the rest of his booking there because of a disagreement with the hotel’s staff.

Born on Oct. 7, 1927, in Philadelphia, Mr. Martino was just 15 when he joined the Navy in 1943. He completed basic training in New Orleans, where he developed a love for country music. “I took the heart of country singing with me into Italian romantic pop,” he said.

After shipping out to Iwo Jima and becoming a signalman on Mount Suribachi, he suffered a shrapnel injury and was given orders to return home. In 1947 he moved to New York City to pursue a career in show business, and earned his break as a winner on the CBS show “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.”

Always the classy dresser, Mr. Martino said in 2009 that he hoped today’s youth would be able to have its own romanticism in future recordings. “I can’t sell records in stores anymore; everything is online and I don’t have access to younger audiences,” he said. “But 20 or 30 years from now, how are kids going to feel romance?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/arts/music/15martino.html?ref=global-home

 

[KindaKinky]

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/14/obit.albano/art.obit.lou.albano.jpg

Wrestler, personality Captain Lou Albano dies at 76

(CNN) -- Legendary wrestling figure Captain Lou Albano, perhaps best known for his association with pop singer Cyndi Lauper, died Wednesday, according to World Wrestling Entertainment.

Captain Lou Albano reached a new level of fame in the '80s with his association with Cyndi Lauper.

Albano, 76, was "one of the company's most popular and charismatic legends," the company said in a statement.

The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

"Albano began his storied career with Vincent J. McMahon in the 1960s as one half of 'The Sicilians' tag team with his partner Tony Altimore," the WWE said. "He will be greatly missed by the WWE and his fans."

Albano, who was with the WWE from 1983 to 1996, was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996.

He started as a tag team wrestler in the 1950s but became a successful manager of champion wrestlers in the 1970s, according to a biography on the WWE Web site.

Albano was recognizable by his penchant for unbuttoned Hawaiian shirts and a trademark beard, which was usually bound by a rubber band.

His persona earned him the distinction of "one of the most hated men" in wrestling for 15 years, the WWE biography said.

Albano's image evolved in the 1980s, when he teamed with Lauper on several music videos, such as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and wrestling appearances.

As his celebrity status grew, Albano landed acting jobs, including a role on several episodes of the "Miami Vice" TV series, the biography said.

Albano became a cartoon in 1989, when he was the voice of Mario "Jumpman" Mario for 17 episodes of "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" according to the Internet Movie Database.

WABC-TV Eyewitness News Coverage: Breaking News
AP

STAMFORD -- The WWE is reporting that Captain Lou Albano has died at the age of 76.

Louis Vincent Albano is best known to fans of professional wrestling, where he was both a wrestler and manager in the 1980s.

He crossed over into other areas of entertainment, including a partnership with singer Cyndi Lauper, and was one of the reasons the initial Wrestlemania in 1985 was such a success.

Albano played Lauper's father in a handful of music videos, the most famous being "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Wrestlers Rescue founder Dawn Marie says Albano died Wednesday of natural causes. Wrestlers Rescue helped raise funds for Albano's care after he was placed in hospice care.

In the video for "Good Enough" from the film, "The Goonies," Albano appears with wrestlers the Iron Sheik, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Classy Freddie Blassie, among others. It also involved the cast of the movie and cameo by Steven Spielberg.

Here is Captain Lou's biography, from the official WWE Web site:
He was "often imitated, never duplicated" and rightfully so, because the legendary Captain Lou Albano will always be one of a kind. With his open Hawaiian shirts, outrageous facial hair and trademark rubber bands hanging from his cheek, Captain Lou may not have looked like much of a success, but his record speaks for itself.

Albano was an excellent athlete as a youth, attending the University of Tennessee on a football scholarship. After a stint in the United States Army, he began his sports-entertainment career in Canada in 1953. Albano soon began teaming with Tony Altimore; together they were known as "The Sicilians." After coming to the WWWF in the 1960s, they defeated the legendary Bruno Sammartino & Spiros Arion to win the WWWF United States Tag Team Championship in 1967.

After the breakup of The Sicilians, Albano transformed himself into a manager, making it his sole mission to end the lengthy WWE Championship reign of Bruno Sammartino. This made him perhaps the most hated man in the promotion, but in 1971, he accomplished his goal; protégé Ivan Koloff defeated Sammartino in Madison Square Garden to end the Italian champion's seven-plus year reign. Koloff's reign lasted only three weeks, and despite managing several other Hall of Famers, Koloff was the only World Champion Albano ever managed. He would lead Don Muraco, Greg Valentine and Pat Patterson to the Intercontinental Championship, but never again tasted a World title.

Having been a tag team star himself, though, it was in managing duos where Albano excelled. In the span of 20 years, he managed 15 different teams to the World Tag Team Championship, earning the nickname "The Guiding Light" and a record that may never be broken. Several of his championship duos featured Hall of Famers, including fellow 1996 Hall of Fame inductees The Valiant Brothers and 2007 inductees The Wild Samoans. Mr. Fuji & Mr. Saito, The Executioners and The Moondogs were just of few of the other teams to become World Tag Team Champions under Captain Lou's guidance.

After 15 years of being one of the most hated men in sports-entertainment, however, Albano had a change of heart. In 1983, he appeared in Cyndi Lauper's music video for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and later claimed to be the catalyst to Lauper's success. Thus began the legendary "Rock n' Wrestling" Era in WWE, which combined with Hulkamania helped launch WWE into a new stratosphere in the mid-1980s. After a lengthy rivalry with the singer (which saw Lauper's pal Wendi Richter win the Women's Championship from Albano's client The Fabulous Moolah), Captain Lou apologized to Lauper and became an instant fan favorite. Once the Rock n' Wrestling phenomenon began to wind down, Albano led the British Bulldogs to the World Tag Team Championship in 1986 before leaving WWE.

In his time away from WWE, Albano capitalized on his newfound celebrity. He appeared in several episodes of shows such as Miami Vice before starring in the film Body Slam alongside fellow Hall of Famer "Rowdy" Roddy Piper in 1987. Albano also managed and performed with rock group NRBQ, who wrote the song "Captain Lou" in his honor. Later, the Captain starred in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a hybrid live-action/animated show; Albano played Nintendo legend Mario in the live portion while also voicing his cartoon counterpart.

After nearly a decade away from the ring, however, Captain Lou returned for one final hurrah. In 1994, Albano joined former protégé Afa the Wild Samoan as advisor of Samu & Fatu, the Headshrinkers. Together, Albano & Afa had success once more, leading Samu & Fatu to the World Tag Team Championship. The Headshrinkers thus became the final team on Captain Lou's legendary list of World Tag Team Champions.

In 1996, Albano claimed his rightful place in the pantheon of the elite, the WWE Hall of Fame. Inducted by legendary New York media personality Joe Franklin, Albano was finally truly recognized as one of sports-entertainment's elite. He was often imitated but never duplicated, and he certainly will never be forgotten either.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Legendary photographer Irving Penn dies, aged 92

His life’s work was for not one, but three youth-obsessed industries — fashion, beauty and publishing — Irving Penn, who died October 7th at his home in New York, aged 92.

He worked to the end, and at the highest level, regularly providing American Vogue and its British counterpart with outstanding images. He was one of the great figures of American photography — a master of fashion, portraiture and still life. No wonder Anna Wintour, Editor of US Vogue, said: “In my career, I have met no one else who works with the level of imaginative intensity and economy of Irving Penn.”

He did not set out to be a photographer, but at the age of 18 enrolled on a four-year course at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. It was only after he quit his job, at 25, in the art department of Saks Fifth Avenue (nominating a talented Russian, Alexander Liberman, to take over) and used up his scant savings to spend a year painting in Mexico, that he had a change of heart. Having decided that he would never be more than a mediocre painter, he abandoned his brushes.

He returned to New York in 1943 where Liberman was art director at Condé Nast. The rest is fashion history. A 50-year gig shooting beautiful women when he felt like it followed (he married the model Lisa Fonssagrives in 1950 and remained with her until her death in 1992). He created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century, from the two languid beauties sharing a secret across a café table to the bar of soap with water bouncing off it that he shot for Clinique, the beauty company.

In some ways, Penn’s immaculately composed, pin-sharp images, with their icily elegant models — what Karl Lagerfeld described as “exquisite” — seem a far cry from today’s more sexualised images. He was, as Robin Derrick, the creative director of British Vogue, said: “A still-life photographer at heart: one with a singularly analytical vision.”

The last decades of his life were marked by extraordinary food photography (for Vogue). In 1943, working in advertising, he said that “photographing a cake can be art”. He was right.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Ex-Rams Rusher Bryant Dies at Age 58

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 16) - Cullen Bryant, who spent 11 seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, was a running back on their 1980 Super Bowl team and fought the NFL's trading rules to remain in town, has died. He was 58.

Unknown to his family, Bryant had been under a doctor's care when he died Tuesday at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo., said his sister-in-law, Wanda E. Bryant. She did not supply other details.

Bryant was the Rams' second-round draft pick in 1973. He played with the team until 1982, was with the Seattle Seahawks in 1983 and 1984 and returned to the Rams for his last pro season in 1987.

In 13 NFL seasons, Bryant scored 23 rushing and receiving touchdowns and ran back kickoffs for three others. He ran for 3,264 yards in 849 carries, and caught 148 passes for 1,176 yards.

He ran for a 1-yard touchdown in the 1980 Super Bowl, which the Rams lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-19.

At 6-foot-1 and 234 pounds, he was the biggest player of the time to regularly return kickoffs.

"When Cullen hits those holes, nobody wants to stick their nose in there," teammate Jack Youngblood told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. "Those little 180-pound (defensive backs) just jump on his back when he runs by."
"He was an outstanding person with great character traits," said Chuck Knox, Bryant's coach with both the Rams and Seahawks. "When we asked him to do certain things, he'd do them. He never complained about anything. When he got that big body moving, it was something else, and he had muscles on top of muscles."

Born William Cullen Bryant on May 20, 1951, in Fort Sill, Okla., Bryant attended high school in Colorado Springs and played football at Colorado University, where he received consensus All-American recognition.

In 1975, only two years after going to the Rams, Bryant went to federal court to challenge the right of then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to order him off the team. The Rams had signed former Detroit Lions receiver Ron Jessie. Under the "Rozelle Rule" on free agents, the team signing a free agent had to compensate the team that lost the player. If the teams couldn't agree on compensation, the commissioner had the power to award either draft choices or players. He decided Bryant should go to Detroit.

At the behest of Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom, Bryant went to court in Los Angeles. A judge was unsympathetic to the NFL's position during a hearing, and the league backed off several days later before a ruling could be made.
The Rozelle Rule eventually was modified.

Bryant, who was divorced, is survived by three brothers; two adult sons, William Cullen Jr. and Brandon, and a 13-year-old daughter, Brianna.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Vic Mizzy, who wrote 'Addams Family' theme, dies

LOS ANGELES — Vic Mizzy, a songwriter who composed the catchy themes for the 1960s sit-coms "The Addams Family" and "Green Acres," has died. He was 93.

Mizzy died Saturday at his home in Bel Air, his manager Jonathan Wolfson said. He said he didn't know the cause of death.

He wrote songs that were recorded by Dean Martin, Doris Day, Perry Como and Billie Holiday in the '40s and '50s. His hits included "Pretty Kitty Blue Eyes," "My Dreams are Getting Better All the Time," and "With a Hey and a Hi and a Ho-Ho-Ho."

But his most famous work was the theme to "The Addams Family," a tune accented by finger snaps and opening with the cleverly quirky lyrics: "They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky: the Addams family."

Mizzy sang the song himself and overdubbed it three times to give the impression of multiple vocalists. He also directed the title sequence where he asked actors who played members of the Addams family to snap their fingers in a bored way.

The enduring tune is often heard during sports game to rally the home team.

"He was smart enough to demand to own the song, which was unheard of at the time. So any time you go to a Lakers game and they play that song, he made money," Wolfson said.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mizzy learned to play the piano as a child. In his teens, he teamed up with Irving Taylor and began writing songs and sketches for variety shows. They won a pair of radio contests and toured the East Coast vaudeville circuit. While served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, the pair wrote several hit songs, including "Three Little Sisters" and "Take It Easy."

Mizzy later composed and wrote songs for television and film, most recently a song for "Spiderman 2" which ended up on the DVD version of the movie.

He is survived by a brother, daughter and two grandchildren.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Top Russian gymnast Ryazanov dies in car crash

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/feed/datasport/img/20091020202317-5821454.jpg

MOSCOW — Russian gymnast Yury Ryazanov, who won a bronze medal at last week's world championships in London, died Tuesday in a car crash, according to local media reports.

The reports said a car being driven by Ryazanov on the Volga federal highway, in the Vladimir region, inexplicably moved over to the wrong side of the road and crashed into an oncoming car.

Ryazanov died immediately, while two passengers in the oncoming car were injured. Local road police opened an investigation into the case but would make no immediate comments.

The 22-year-old had been a member of Russia's gymnastics team since 2006. He also won the European championships in 2008 and the silver medal at the 2006 world championships.

Ryazanov was also part of the Russian team that placed sixth at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

 

[HB1965]

October 15, 2009
Al Martino, ‘Godfather’ Singer, Dies
By A. E. VELEZ

Al Martino, the baritone renowned for a string of hits, including the sentimental ballads “Spanish Eyes,” “Volare” and “Speak Softly Love,” and for his role as the wedding singer in “The Godfather,” died Tuesday in Springfield, Pa., The Associated Press reported. He was 82.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/arts/music/15martino.html?ref=global-home

How odd that he died a few days after his birthday

 

[KindaKinky]

Former LA Times journalist Jack Nelson dies at 80

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20091021/capt.e6b56b62854f4188a664b46320429396.obit_nelson_ny116.jpg

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 8 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Jack Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who covered the civil rights movement and the Watergate scandal for the Los Angeles Times and was the paper's Washington bureau chief for 20 years, died Wednesday. He was 80.

Nelson, who had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md., said Richard Cooper a family friend and longtime Times associate.

Nelson spent more than 35 years with the Los Angeles Times, stepping down as its chief Washington correspondent in 2001. He joined the Times in 1965 and in 1970 began working in its Washington bureau. He was bureau chief from 1975 to the end of 1995.

As a reporter with The Atlanta Constitution in 1960, he won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for exposing malpractice and other problems at the 12,000-patient state mental hospital in Milledgeville, Ga.

"Jack was a reporter's reporter," said Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times. "He maintained that the main thing people want from newspapers is facts — facts they didn't know before, and preferably facts that somebody didn't want them to know. Jack was tolerant of opinion writers; he respected analysis writers, and he even admired one or two feature writers. But he believed the only good reason to be a reporter was to reveal hidden facts and bring them to light."

Nelson began focusing on civil rights issues when he opened the Los Angeles Times bureau in Atlanta in 1965.

"He carried his investigative abilities forward and applied them to what was going on in the South during the civil rights era," said veteran journalist Gene Roberts, an author of the book "The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation." "Jack had what the military calls 'command presence.' He was very self-confident and his earnestness and authority communicated itself."

Two of Nelson's five books stemmed from his civil rights reporting: "The Orangeburg Massacre" (1970), co-authored with Jack Bass, which chronicled the 1968 incident in which police fired into a crowd of young protesters at South Carolina State College, killing three, and "Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the Jews" (1993).

"A reporter likes to pride himself on being as objective as he can and, you know, tell them both sides of the story. Well, there's hardly two sides to a story of a man being denied the basic right to vote," Nelson said in an interview in 2004. "There's no two sides to a story of a lynching. A lynching is a lynching."

Nelson covered presidential administrations from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. During the Watergate scandal, he scored an exclusive interview with a security guard for the Nixon re-election campaign who had been involved in the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

John Howard Nelson was born on Oct. 11, 1929, in Talladega, Ala., and graduated from high school in Biloxi, Miss. He was a reporter for the Biloxi Daily Herald from 1947 to 1951 before serving a stint in the U.S. Army. He joined The Atlanta Constitution in 1952.

Survivors include his wife, journalist Barbara Matusow, and two children, Karen and John Michael "Mike" Nelson, from his marriage to Virginia Dickinson. Another son, Steven, died earlier.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Flowered Up Singer Liam Maher Dies at 41

Liam Maher, vocalist for early '90s band Flowered Up, died Tuesday, Oct. 20 at the age of 41. Maher fronted the band, which earned notoriety during the baggy movement as the London equivalent to the northern "Madchester" dance-inspired rock outfits like the Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets.

Although little information about the circumstances of Maher's death are known other than he died at his home, Jeff Barrett -- who founded the band's label Heavenly -- told MusicWeek, "This is very sad news, a real shame. Liam and Flowered Up burned beautifully and brightly at exactly the right time. They had their moment and seized it by the bollocks."

The group -- dubbed the "Cockney Happy Mondays" during their brief tenure -- went on to become NME and Melody Maker cover stars, releasing the Heavenly singles 'It's On' in 1990 and the 13-minute 'Weekender' in 1992, plus the full-length album 'The Life of Brian,' which surfaced on London Records in 1991.

After the band's split in 1993, Maher reportedly battled drug problems but by 2001 he had signed to Creation Records founder Alan McGee's new label Poptones. However no material from that allegiance has seen the light of day.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Collin Wilcox, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Accuser, Dies of Cancer

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Collin Wilcox, who portrayed a young white woman who falsely accuses a black man of rape in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and went on to appear in numerous TV shows and films like 'Jaws 2,' died at her home in North Carolina last week. She was 74. Her husband, Scott Paxton, said the actress died on Oct. 14 of brain cancer, the New York Times reports.

As the character Mayella Violet Ewell, who accused Brock Peters' character of rape, she delivers a court speech that stands out as one of the most memorable scenes in 'Mockingbird.' While being cross-examined by Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch, she tearfully responds:

"I got something to say, and then I ain't gonna say no more. He took advantage of me! And if you fine, fancy, damn ... ain't gonna do nothin' about it, then you're just a bunch a' lousy yella stinkin' cowards ... the ... the whole bunch of ya. And your fancy airs don't come to nothin'. Your manners and your "Miss Mayella," it don't come to nothin' Mr. Finch!"

'Mockingbird' was her major-film debut and she later appeared on TV show such as 'The Twilight Zone,' 'The Untouchables' and 'Gunsmoke.'

She appeared in several more films, including 'Catch-22' and the 'Jaws' sequel, before moving back to her native North Carolina where she and her husband founded a children's arts center.

In addition to her husband, Paxton is survived by her children, Kimberley and Michael.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Another "chunk" of my past has passed

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Count your legends while they last.

Iconic funnyman Soupy Sales (totally not his real name), perhaps best known for the thousands of pies he took to the face during his 30-plus years on TV and radio, died Thursday at a hospice in the Bronx. He was 83 and had been in bad health for some time, according to longtime friend and former manager Dave Usher.

The rubberfaced slapstick specialist, whom Howard Stern has namechecked as one of his comedic heroes, started hosting the kids show Lunch With Soupy Sales in 1959, a combination of puppetry, skits and physical comedy that usually resulted in Sales being hit with a pie in the face.

Just as Sesame Street transcends age groups, Sales made his kids show adult friendly by featuring celebs like Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine and any other good-natured star willing to take a pie to the punim.

Sales, who was born Milton Supman to Hungarian-immigrant parents in North Carolina, took his "who needs a punchline when there's pie" shtick with him into the 60s and 70s, when he was also a regular panelist on the game show What's My Line?

"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's alright," Sales said in an interview in 1985.

In what would have turned into one heck of a viral story if the Internet had been around in 1965, a disgruntled Sales ended his New Year's Day broadcast of The Soupy Sales Show by instructing his young audience to creep into their parents' bedrooms, take their parents' "funny green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. Presidents," and mail the paper to him.

When money started arriving at the studio, Sales explained he was only joking and either returned the dough or donated the unreturnables to charity.

The 1970s-era cast of Saturday Night Live once paid homage to the man by entreating its audience to mail in their joints.

Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and his musician sons, Hunt and Tony.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv3rVV1mfs

 

[JennyOmanHill]

NHL icon Bill Chadwick dies at 94

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CUTCHOGUE, N.Y. — Bill "The Big Whistle" Chadwick, the first U.S.-born official in NHL history who was later a popular broadcaster for the New York Rangers, died Saturday. He was 94.

His death was announced by son Bill and confirmed by John Halligan, a family friend and hockey historian. Chadwick had been in declining health for a number of years and died while in hospice care.

For 16 seasons, from 1939 to 1955, and despite being blind in one eye, Chadwick was one of the best officials the NHL. He invented and perfected the system of hand signals to signify penalties, and the system is now used throughout the world.

"Bill Chadwick had the confidence and the creativity to introduce hand signals to officiating," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said. "He had the courage to make the tough calls. His honesty and integrity brought him to the very top of his profession."

William Leroy Chadwick was born in Manhattan on Oct. 10, 1915. He became an amateur hockey player of some note while attending Jamaica High School.

He also excelled at baseball, winning the city championship with Jamaica in 1933 and playing at various times against future major leaguers Phil Rizzuto and Sid Gordon.

But hockey was Chadwick's sport of choice, and he honed his skills on racing skates at Baisley Park and Goose Pond in Queens and at the Brooklyn Ice Palace.

Following high school, Chadwick played under an assumed name at Fordham University. A center, he also starred with the Jamaica Hawks and the New York Stock Exchange Brokers in the Metropolitan Amateur Hockey League.

In 1935, playing for a Met League All-Star Team at Madison Square Garden, Chadwick was struck in the right eye by an errant puck as he stepped onto the ice to face a team from Boston. He spent a week at Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, but doctors were unable to restore the vision in the eye.

Despite the injury, Chadwick continued to play hockey with the New York Rovers of the Eastern Hockey League. Then, early in the 1936-37 season, he was hit in his left eye by an opposing player's stick. The injury wasn't nearly as serious as the earlier one, but Chadwick knew his hockey-playing days were finished.

"Nobody loved the game more than I did, but I couldn't take the chance of losing the other eye as well," Chadwick recalled in his autobiography, "The Big Whistle" — written with former Associated Press writer Hal Bock.

In March of 1937, Chadwick was at the Garden watching the Rovers in pregame warmups. He was paged over the public address system and asked to report to the timekeeper's bench. The scheduled referee, Ray Levia, was stuck in a snowstorm, and Tommy Lockhart, the Garden's amateur hockey boss, asked Bill to referee the game.

"Where's the whistle?" Chadwick said.

Chadwick soon caught the attention of NHL president Frank Calder, In 1939, Calder asked Chadwick to join the NHL as a linesman. He accepted and became the NHL's first U.S.-born official, working his first game at the Garden, the Montreal Canadiens versus the New York Americans. A year later, he was promoted to referee.

"There were some prejudices against me being an American and all," Chadwick remembered, "but I had the full support of Calder and his successor, Clarence Campbell. Lester Patrick, the Rangers' general manager, was also a great booster of mine."

As for the hand signals, Chadwick doesn't recall exactly when he started using them. "Somewhere around 1943 or 1944 would be fairly accurate," he told Halligan.

"I know it was during the Stanley Cup finals," Chadwick said. "There was so much noise that I had difficulty communicating with the penalty timekeeper."

Chadwick's signals were not made official by the league until 1956, the year after he retired.

Following his hockey career, Chadwick was general manager of a moving company in Brooklyn, and manager of the Pine Hollow Country Club in East Norwich.

In 1965, at the urging of Emile Francis, the Rangers' longtime general manager and coach, Chadwick embarked on a 14-year broadcasting career, working first on radio with play by play man Marv Albert, and most notably, on television with Jim Gordon for nine seasons

"Bill was a natural for broadcasting even though he wasn't formally trained in it," Francis said. "He and Jim Gordon got more mail than some of our players. For a native New Yorker to do what he did in hockey at that time was really unbelievable."

Arthur Friedman, the Rangers' longtime statistician, dubbed Chadwick "The Big Whistle" in 1969, and the nickname stuck.

"That nickname made me a celebrity," Chadwick recalled.

As a referee, Chadwick worked more than 900 regular-season games, plus a record 42 Stanley Cup finals games, including 13 games in which the Cup was decided.

In 1964, Chadwick was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, only the fifth official, and the first American-born official, to be so honored. In 1974, he was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. In 1975, he won the Lester Patrick Award for outstanding service to hockey in the United States.

Chadwick retired in 1988 to Cutchogue on Long Island's north shore.

He was preceded in death by wife Millie. In addition to son Bill of Malibu, Calif., Chadwick is survived by five grandchildren, and long-time companion Joan Langemyr of Cutchogue.



It was a pleasure to have enjoyed the Big Whistle's views and comments while watching my favorite team. "Shoot the puck, Barry! Shoot the puck!"

 

[Igor_1066]

Lou Filippo dies at 83; boxing hall of famer appeared in 'Rocky' movies

latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-lou-filippo5-2009nov05,0,453232.story
latimes.com
Lou Filippo dies at 83; boxing hall of famer appeared in 'Rocky' movies
Filippo was known as a pillar of honesty in the sport. He refereed and judged 85 world championship fights, including Sugar Ray Leonard's split-decision win over Marvin Hagler in 1987.

By Lance Pugmire

November 5, 2009

Lou Filippo, a boxing hall of famer from Downey who became a referee and ring judge, memorably counting out Sylvester Stallone's champion rival Apollo Creed in the film "Rocky II," died Monday at Downey Regional Medical Center after suffering a stroke. He was 83.

Filippo was a distinguished amateur fighter who fought in more than 250 bouts before turning pro. His fighting career ended in 1957 with a no-contest outcome and a technical knockout loss against Hall of Famer Carlos Ortiz, a bout stopped because of Filippo's cuts -- bleeding plagued his 23-9-3 pro career.

Boxing historian Don Fraser of the California Boxing Hall of Fame recalled that Filippo was originally awarded a victory in the first bout against Ortiz after being hit after the bell, but a Times reporter questioned a member of the California State Athletic Commission about that ruling, and the no-contest decision was invoked.

Fraser said about 40 gamblers who were set to lose money on the Filippo victory then forced the ring announcer to re-enter the Legion Stadium ring in Hollywood and announce the ruling so they could avoid the payoffs.

In a sport often stained by shady behavior, Fraser and veteran boxing publicist Bill Caplan recalled Filippo as a pillar of character and honesty who proceeded to referee and judge 85 world championship fights, including Sugar Ray Leonard's controversial split-decision victory over Marvin Hagler in 1987. Filippo scored narrowly in Hagler's favor.

"He took some heat, but why?" Caplan asked. "The perfect man would've taken heat over that fight. Half of the people thought each guy won."

Filippo also judged Shane Mosley's split-decision victory over Oscar De La Hoya at Staples Center in 2000, awarding Mosley a 116-112 score.

Filippo told his two daughters that the most important part of his job was to maintain integrity and to "listen to yourself, not the fans."

Caplan said Filippo's reputation as a "loyal, straight-up guy" helped him win Stallone's attention, and the actor used Filippo in five "Rocky" movies. In "Rocky II," Filippo tells Stallone's bloodied character Rocky Balboa before the epic 15th round, "Hey, Rock, you get in trouble one more time . . . ," to which Balboa answers, "Don't stop nothing!" When both fighters fall to the canvas on a Balboa punch and Creed slumps in a corner, Filippo tells the champ, "You're out!"

Filippo was born Dec. 1, 1925 in Los Angeles, attended Fremont High School in South L.A. and served in the Navy during World War II.

He was elected president of the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1993, and he judged a bout at the Commerce Casino only two weeks ago, his daughter Patti Petruzelli said. She said her father was never sick and only complained of his first headache last week. But he sorely missed his late wife, Pat, who died in 2007, and his daughter said, "He's where he wants to be now. He loved her.

"Boxing was his second love."

In addition to Petruzelli, Filippo is survived by another daughter, Debbye Shepard; two grandsons; and three great-grandchildren.

Visitation is scheduled for Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. at Miller Mies Mortuary, 11015 Downey Ave., Downey. The funeral will be Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, 10727 Downey Ave., Downey.

 

[Igor_1066]

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of the ‘Primitive’

The New York Times

November 4, 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of the ‘Primitive’
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist whose revolutionary studies of what was once called “primitive man” transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization, has died at 100.

His son Laurent said Mr. Lévi-Strauss died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Paris. His death was announced Tuesday, the same day he was buried in the village of Lignerolles, in the Côte-d’Or region southeast of Paris, where he had a country home.

“He had expressed the wish to have a discreet and sober funeral, with his family, in his country house,” his son said. “He was attached to this place; he liked to take walks in the forest, and the cemetery where he is now buried is just on the edge of this forest.”

A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss, in studying the mythologies of primitive tribes, transformed the way the 20th century came to understand civilization itself. Tribal mythologies, he argued, display remarkably subtle systems of logic, showing rational mental qualities as sophisticated as those of Western societies.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss rejected the idea that differences between societies were of no consequence, but he focused on the common aspects of humanity’s attempts to understand the world. He became the premier representative of “structuralism,” a school of thought in which universal “structures” were believed to underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations.

His work was a profound influence even on his critics, of whom there were many. There has been no comparable successor to him in France. And his writing — a mixture of the pedantic and the poetic, full of daring juxtapositions, intricate argument and elaborate metaphors — resembles little that had come before in anthropology.

“People realize he is one of the great intellectual heroes of the 20th century,” Philippe Descola, the chairman of the anthropology department at the Collège de France, said last November in an interview with The New York Times on the centenary of Mr. Levi-Strauss’s birth. Mr. Lévi-Strauss was so revered that the occasion was celebrated in at least 25 countries.

A descendant of a distinguished French-Jewish artistic family, he was a quintessential French intellectual, as comfortable in the public sphere as in the academy. He taught at universities in Paris, New York and São Paulo, Brazil, and also worked for the United Nations and the French government.

His legacy is imposing. “Mythologiques,” his four-volume work about the structure of native mythology in the Americas, attempts nothing less than an interpretation of the world of culture and custom, shaped by analysis of several hundred myths of little-known tribes and traditions. The volumes — “The Raw and the Cooked,” “From Honey to Ashes,” “The Origin of Table Manners” and “The Naked Man,” published from 1964 to 1971 — challenge the reader with their complex interweaving of theme and detail.

In his analysis of myth and culture, Mr. Lévi-Strauss might contrast imagery of monkeys and jaguars; consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies); and establish connections between weird mythological tales and ornate laws of marriage and kinship.

Many of his books include diagrams that look like maps of interstellar geometry, formulas that evoke mathematical techniques, and black-and-white photographs of scarified faces and exotic ritual that he made during his field work.

‘The Savage Mind’

His interpretations of North and South American myths were pivotal in changing Western thinking about so-called primitive societies. He began challenging the conventional wisdom about them shortly after beginning his anthropological research in the 1930s — an experience that became the basis of an acclaimed 1955 book, “Tristes Tropiques,” a sort of anthropological meditation based on his travels in Brazil and elsewhere.

The accepted view held that primitive societies were intellectually unimaginative and temperamentally irrational, basing their approaches to life and religion on the satisfaction of urgent needs for food, clothing and shelter.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss rescued his subjects from this limited perspective. Beginning with the Caduveo and Bororo tribes in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, where he did his first and primary fieldwork, he found among them a dogged quest not just to satisfy material needs but also to understand origins, a sophisticated logic that governed even the most bizarre myths, and an implicit sense of order and design, even among tribes who practiced ruthless warfare.

His work elevated the status of “the savage mind,” a phrase that became the English title of one of his most forceful surveys, “La Pensée Sauvage” (1962).

“The thirst for objective knowledge,” he wrote, “is one of the most neglected aspects of the thought of people we call ‘primitive.’ ”

The world of primitive tribes was fast disappearing. From 1900 to 1950, more than 90 tribes and 15 languages had disappeared in Brazil alone. This was another of Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s recurring themes. He worried about the growth of a “mass civilization,” of a modern “monoculture.” He sometimes expressed exasperated self-disgust with the West and its “own filth, thrown in the face of mankind.”

In this seeming elevation of the savage mind and denigration of Western modernity, he was writing within the tradition of French Romanticism, inspired by the 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom Mr. Lévi-Strauss revered. It was a view that helped build Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s public reputation in the era of countercultural romanticism in the 1960s and ’70s.

But such simplified romanticism, and the cultural relativism that developed in later decades, was also a distortion of his ideas. For Mr. Lévi-Strauss, the savage was not intrinsically noble or in any way “closer to nature.” Mr. Lévi-Strauss was withering, for example, when describing the Caduveo, whom he portrayed as a tribe so in rebellion against nature — and thus doomed — that it even shunned procreation, choosing to “reproduce” by abducting children from enemy tribes.

His descriptions of North and South American Indian tribes bear little relation to the sentimental and pastoral clichés that have become commonplace. Mr. Lévi-Strauss also made sharp distinctions between the primitive and the modern, focusing on the development of writing and historical awareness. It was an awareness of history, in his view, that allowed the development of science and the evolution and expansion of the West.

But he worried about the fate of the West. It was, he wrote in The New York Review of Books, “allowing itself to forget or destroy its own heritage.” With the fading of myth’s power in the modern West, he also suggested that music had taken on myth’s function. Music, he argued, had the ability to suggest, with primal narrative power, the conflicting forces and ideas that lie at the foundation of society.

But Mr. Lévi-Strauss rejected Rousseau’s idea that humankind’s problems derive from society’s distortions of nature. In his view, there is no alternative to such distortions. Each society must shape itself out of nature’s raw material, he believed, with law and reason as the essential tools. This application of reason, he argued, created universals that could be found across all cultures and times. He became known as a structuralist because of his conviction that a structural unity underlies all of humanity’s mythmaking, and he showed how those universal motifs played out in societies, even in the ways a village was laid out.

For Mr. Lévi-Strauss, every culture’s mythology was built around oppositions: hot and cold, raw and cooked, animal and human. And it is through these opposing “binary” concepts, he said, that humanity makes sense of the world.

This was quite different from what most anthropologists had been concerned with. Anthropology had traditionally sought to disclose differences among cultures rather than discovering universals. It had been preoccupied not with abstract ideas but with the particularities of rituals and customs, collecting and cataloguing them.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s “structural” approach, seeking universals about the human mind, cut against that notion of anthropology. He did not try to determine the various purposes served by a society’s practices and rituals. He was never interested in the kind of fieldwork that anthropologists of a later generation, like Clifford Geertz, took on, closely observing and analyzing a society as if from the inside. (He began “Tristes Tropiques” with the statement “I hate traveling and explorers.”)

Ideas That Shook His Field

To his mind, as he wrote in “The Raw and the Cooked,” translated from “Le Cru et le Cuit” (1964), he had taken “ethnographic research in the direction of psychology, logic and philosophy.”

In radio talks for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1977 (published as “Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture”), Mr. Lévi-Strauss demonstrated how a structural examination of myth might proceed. He cited a report that in 17th-century Peru, when the weather became exceedingly cold, a priest would summon all those who had been born feet first, or who had a harelip, or who were twins. They were accused of being responsible for the weather and were ordered to repent. But why these groups? Why harelips and twins?

Mr. Lévi-Strauss cited a series of North American myths that associate twins with opposing natural forces: threat and promise, danger and expectation. One myth, for example, includes a magical hare, a rabbit, whose nose is split in a fight, resulting, literally, in a harelip, suggesting an incipient twinness. With his injunctions, the Peruvian priest seemed aware of associations between cosmic disorder and the latent powers of twins.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s ideas shook his field. But his critics were plentiful. They attacked him for ignoring history and geography, using myths from one place and time to help illuminate myths from another, without demonstrating any direct connection or influence.

In an influential critical survey of his work in 1970, the Cambridge University anthropologist Edmund Leach wrote of Mr. Lévi-Strauss: “Even now, despite his immense prestige, the critics among his professional colleagues greatly outnumber the disciples.”

Mr. Leach himself doubted whether Mr. Lévi-Strauss, during his fieldwork in Brazil, could have conversed with “any of his native informants in their native language” or stayed long enough to confirm his first impressions. Some of Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s theoretical arguments, including his explanation of cannibals and their tastes, have been challenged by empirical research.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss conceded that his strength was in his interpretations of what he discovered, and he thought that his critics did not sufficiently credit the cumulative impact of those speculations. “Why not admit it?” he once said to an interviewer, Didier Eribon, in “Conversations With Lévi-Strauss” (1988). “I was fairly quick to discover that I was more a man for the study than for the field.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss was born on Nov. 28, 1908, in Brussels to Raymond Lévi-Strauss and the former Emma Levy, who were living in Belgium at the time. He grew up in France, near Versailles, where his grandfather was a rabbi and his father a portrait painter. His great-grandfather Isaac Strauss was a Strasbourg violinist mentioned by Berlioz in his memoirs. As a child, he loved to collect disparate objects and juxtapose them. “I had a passion for exotic curios,” he said in “Conversations.” “My small savings all went to the secondhand shops.” A collection of Jewish antiquities from his family’s collection, he said, was displayed in the Musée de Cluny in Paris; others were looted after France fell to the Nazis in 1940. From 1927 to 1932, Claude obtained degrees in law and philosophy at the University of Paris, then taught in a local high school, the Lycée Janson de Sailly, where his fellow teachers included Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He later became a professor of sociology at the French-influenced University of São Paulo in Brazil.

A Taste for Adventure

Determined to become an anthropologist, he began making trips into the country’s interior, accompanied by his wife, Dina Dreyfus, whom he married in 1932. “I was envisaging a way of reconciling my professional education with my taste for adventure,” he said in “Conversations,” adding: “I felt I was reliving the adventures of the first 16th-century explorers.”

His marriage to Ms. Dreyfus ended in divorce, as did a subsequent marriage, in 1946, to Rose-Marie Ullmo, with whom he had his son Laurent. In 1954 he married Monique Roman, and they, too, had a son, Matthieu. Besides Laurent, Mr. Lévi-Strauss is survived by his wife and Matthieu as well as by Matthieu’s two sons.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss left teaching in 1937 and devoted himself to fieldwork, returning to France in 1939 for further study. But on the eve of World War II, he was drafted into the French Army to serve as a liaison with British troops. In “Tristes Tropiques,” he writes of his “disorderly retreat” from the Maginot Line after Hitler’s invasion of France, fleeing in cattle trucks, sleeping in “sheep folds.”

In 1941 Mr. Lévi-Strauss was invited to become a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, with help from the Rockefeller Foundation. He called it “the most fruitful period of my life,” spending time in the reading room of the New York Public Library and befriending the distinguished German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas and the Russian-born linguist (and structuralist) Roman Jakobson.

He also became part of a circle of artists and Surrealists, including Max Ernst, André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre’s future mistress, Dolorès Vanetti. Ms. Vanetti shared his “passion for objects,” Mr. Lévi-Strauss said in “Conversations,” and the two regularly visited an antique shop in Manhattan that sold artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. The excursions left Mr. Lévi-Strauss with the “impression that all the essentials of humanity’s artistic treasures could be found in New York."

After the war, Mr. Lévi-Strauss was so intent on pursuing his studies in New York that he was given the position of cultural attaché by the French government until 1947. On his return to France, he earned a doctorate in letters from the University of Paris in 1948 and was associate curator at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris in 1948 and 1949. His first major book, “The Elementary Structures of Kinship,” was published in 1949. (Several years later, the jury of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most famous literary award, said that it would have given the prize to “Tristes Tropiques,” his hybrid of memoir and anthropological travelogue, had it been fiction.)

After the Rockefeller Foundation gave the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris a grant to create a department of social and economic sciences, Mr. Lévi-Strauss became the school’s director of studies, remaining in the post from 1950 to 1974.

Other positions followed. From 1953 to 1960, he served as secretary general of the International Social Science Council at Unesco. In 1959 he was appointed professor at the Collège de France. He was elected to the French Academy in 1973. By 1960, Mr. Lévi-Strauss had founded L’Homme, a journal modeled on The American Anthropologist.

By the 1980s, structuralism as imagined by Mr. Lévi-Strauss had been displaced by French thinkers who became known as poststructuralists: writers like Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. They rejected the idea of timeless universals and argued that history and experience were far more important in shaping human consciousness than universal laws.

“French society, and especially Parisian, is gluttonous,” Mr. Lévi-Strauss responded. “Every five years or so, it needs to stuff something new in its mouth. And so five years ago it was structuralism, and now it is something else. I practically don’t dare use the word ‘structuralist’ anymore, since it has been so badly deformed. I am certainly not the father of structuralism.”

But Mr. Lévi-Strauss’s version of structuralism may end up surviving poststructuralism, just as he survived most of its proponents. His monumental work “Mythologiques” may even ensure his legacy, as a creator of mythologies if not their explicator.

The final volume ends by suggesting that the logic of mythology is so powerful that myths almost have a life independent from the peoples who tell them. In his view, myths speak through the medium of humanity and become, in turn, the tools with which humanity comes to terms with the world’s greatest mystery: the possibility of not being, the burden of mortality.

Nadim Audi contributed reporting from Paris.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

Edward Woodward of The Equalizer dies at 89

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tvsquad.com/media/2009/11/theequalizer.jpg

Edward Woodward, who had a long career on stage and in movies but is probably best remembered for the TV series The Equalizer, died Monday at 79.

His agent, Janet Glass, said he had been ill for several months and died in a hospital in Truro, England, with family members around him.

In a statement, Glass said he sustained a "brave spirit and wonderful humor" throughout his illness.

Woodward won a Golden Globe and received five Emmy nominations for his star turn in The Equalizer, which ran on CBS from 1985 to '89. The British actor, who had a heart attack during the series, played an ex-spy who helped regular people even the odds against anyone with whom they had a problem.

Earlier, he forged a career as a Shakespearean actor and showed his on-stage range by performing musical comedy so well that Noel Coward praised his work.

In films, he starred in 1973's occult thriller The Wicker Man (remade by Neil LaBute in 2006, starring Nicolas Cage) and quite memorably filled the title role in 1980's Breaker Morant, playing a soldier who's made a scapegoat and court-martialed during the Boer War.

Simon Pegg, a big fan who cast him in his 2007 film Hot Fuzz, said on Twitter: "So sorry to hear we have lost the great Edward Woodward. Feel lucky to have worked with him."

While The Equalizer made Woodward a star in the United States, he had been a longtime stalwart of British television. His appearances included a turn in the Evelyn Waugh trilogy Sword of Honour in the 1960s and a role earlier this year in the BBC soap EastEnders.

He told The Associated Press in 1987 he had appeared in "over 2,000, could be 3,000 now, television productions." He added: "I love television. To me it's the most exciting medium."

Woodward had three children with first wife Venetia. After they divorced, he wed actress Michele Dotrice, and they had a daughter. Survivors include his children and Dotrice.

 

[Bacigalupo]

I shall add to the Edward Woodward obit.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43091

 

[RoryN]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tvsquad.com/media/2008/07/remotecontrolober.jpg

Ken Ober of MTV’s ‘Remote Control’ dies at 52
1987 game show ushered in original, non-music-video programming

The New York Times is reporting that comedian Ken Ober, best known as the host of MTV’s “Remote Control,” died this weekend of unknown causes, although he had been complaining of flu-like symptoms. He was 52.

Ober began hosting “Remote Control” in 1987, marking MTV’s first foray into original, non-music-video programming.

He had more recently been a producer on Comedy Central’s “Mind of Mencia” and CBS sitcom “The New Adventures of Old Christine.”

****

RoryN's addition: He was also in the Blues Traveller music videos "Run Around" and "Hook", their biggest hits.

 

[JennyOmanHill]

'Gates' Co-Creator Jeanne-Claude Dies

NEW YORK (Nov. 19) - Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation "The Gates" and other large scale "wrapping" projects around the globe with her husband Christo, has died. She was 74.

Jeanne-Claude died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, her family said in an e-mail statement.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he spoke with Christo on Thursday morning and offered condolences on behalf of all New Yorkers.

"The Gates" festooned 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames.

More than 5 million people saw "The Gates," and it was credited with injecting about $254 million into the local economy.

Christo — the more famous of the duo — was saddened, the family statement said, but remains "committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue." That includes completing their current installation, "Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado" and "The Mastaba" a project in the United Arab Emirates.

The Colorado project — which they had done parts of on and off for decades — involves spanning miles of the river with woven fabric. They chose the location near Canon City because of its river rapids and access to roads and footpaths. It is expected to be realized by summer 2013 at the earliest, according to the couple's office.

Their other projects include wrapping the Reichstag in Germany, the Pont Neuf in Paris, the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland and a Roman wall in Italy.
A 1991 project involved thousands of bright yellow and blue umbrellas positioned across miles of inland valleys in Japan and California.

Their projects required mammoth manpower and miles of fabric and other materials. For the umbrella project, a total of 1,880 workers were used. They recycled all materials following each project.

The couple said they never accepted any sponsorship and financed all their temporary installations through the projects, including the sale of their preparatory drawings, collages, scale models and original lithographs.

The two artists met in Paris in 1958 and had been collaborating for 51 years on temporary public arts projects. They made their home in Manhattan, where they had lived for 45 years.

Jeanne-Claude, who sported signature orange-dyed hair, once said that the couple, like parents who wouldn't favor one child over another, felt that "each project is a child of ours."

But she added that their favorite project was "the next one."



http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/77/84677-004-82B080DB.jpg

 

[miles]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2124/2619241447_dd93fd0057.jpg?v=0

Uga VII, the white English bulldog mascot for the University of Georgia's football team for almost two seasons, died Thursday of heart-related causes, the dog's owner said

The 56-pound dog, nicknamed "Loran's Best," was known as a laid-back mascot who seemed oblivious to crowd noise during boisterous games and would sit patiently as excited fans snapped photos of him. He often roamed the sidelines in a shirt with a 'G' stitched on it, sometimes resting on a bag of ice to cool off in his customized dog house.

The school said there would be no mascot at Saturday's game in Athens against Southeastern Conference rival Kentucky, but that a wreath will be laid on his doghouse on the field's sidelines. Sonny Seiler, the dog's owner, said he likely wouldn't name a replacement until next year.

"We are all in a state of shock," Seiler said in a news release issued by the university. "We had no warning whatsoever."

The 4-year-old dog made his debut as the mascot in August 2008 after his father, Uga VI, died of congestive heart failure. He had big paws to fill — Uga VI was the school's winningest mascot, racking up an 87-27 record, seven wins in nine bowl appearances and a pair of Southeastern Conference championships.

But Seiler said the dog distinguished himself in his own way.

"He was 10-3 last year which is not bad for a freshman," said Seiler. "Uga VII was not as active or mischievous as his father but more distinguished. He realized his role when he put his shirt on. He was well-behaved and always appreciated the significance of his role."

The dog was the latest in a line of mascots that have been featured on the covers of Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and in several movies. He also was a compelling symbol for football fans across the nation, said Damon Evans, the school's athletic director.

"Just as his ancestors, he had captured the hearts of college football fans everywhere as the country's No. 1 mascot," Evans said. "He had been truly embraced by all those who follow the Georgia Bulldogs across the country. We will miss him dearly