Good Reads

[KRCummings]

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Romance fiction is widely reckoned to be a very low form of literature. Maybe the lowest, if we're not counting the writing at Groupon, or on Splenda packets. Romance fiction: probably the worst! An addictive, absurd, unintellectual literature, literature for nonreaders, literature for stupid people—literature for women! Books Just For Her!

Low or not, romance is by far the most popular and lucrative genre in American publishing, with over $1.35 billion in revenues estimated in 2010. That is a little less than twice the size of the mystery genre, almost exactly twice that of science fiction/fantasy, and nearly three times the size of the market for classic/literary fiction, according to Simba Information data published at the Romance Writers of America website.

It would be crazy to fail to pay close attention when that many people are devoted to something.​

- read the full article Romance Novels, The Last Great Bastion Of Underground Writing (from The Awl)​

Years ago I knew a writer who wrote romance fiction for publishers like Harlequin. He wasn't ashamed of it but he didn't advertise it either. Said it paid the bills but just barely.
The market is certainly there but the very little experience/knowledge I have of it suggests that they want good writers who are willing to prostitute themselves and not poor writers who just want published.

 

[Laurel]

Years ago I knew a writer who wrote romance fiction for publishers like Harlequin. He wasn't ashamed of it but he didn't advertise it either. Said it paid the bills but just barely.
The market is certainly there but the very little experience/knowledge I have of it suggests that they want good writers who are willing to prostitute themselves and not poor writers who just want published.

I don't know that much about it personally, but from what I've heard it's a great way to make a living if you are able to write a lot, steadily, and in a template. Romance readers have extremely specific needs. If you write in a heroine with the wrong attributes, they get very angry. You really have to know your audience. Romance readers are voracious, so if you get a following you can sell a lot. The downside is you have to write a helluva lot to make a living. The upside is if you enjoy writing, you get to write all day long, make a living typing away in comfy clothes. It's not a bad gig for many.

 

[Laurel]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/07/07/magazine/07everman2/07everman2-popup.jpg
In July 1989, Jason Everman was a member of Nirvana.

He had three drill sergeants, two of whom were sadists. Thank God it was the easygoing one who saw it. He was reading a magazine, when he slowly looked up and stared at Everman. Then the sergeant walked over, pointing to a page in the magazine. “Is this you?” It was a photo of the biggest band in the world, Nirvana. Kurt Cobain had just killed himself, and this was a story about his suicide. Next to Cobain was the band’s onetime second guitarist. A guy with long, strawberry blond curls. “Is this you?”

Everman exhaled. “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

And that was only half of it. Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.

Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.​

- read the full article The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero (from The New York Times)​

Bumping this because it's an awesome story.

 

[pete]

Bumping this because it's an awesome story.

thanks
look forward to reading it

 

[Laurel]

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/19/1371654999562/Toby-Burke-008.jpg
Toby Burke: 'I struck the bear as hard as I could, five or six times, aiming for the eyes and nose.'

I work for the US Fish & Wildlife Service and always carry a gun or pepper spray in bear country, but I'd never seen so much as a paw print on that beach. There are established rules for bear encounters and my family are well drilled. Bears rarely attack people unless provoked and I was confident we'd see this one off by letting it know we were human. "Hey, bear," I shouted. "Get out of here!" We bunched together to make ourselves look more imposing and clapped and yelled, expecting her to back off. She bounded towards us.

"Get behind me," I said. "Stay with me and don't run, no matter what." An aggressive bear will usually make a "bluff charge" to frighten away an adversary, growling and roaring, but pulling up short at the last minute. This one was silent, ears pinned back – the sign of an animal that's going in for the kill.

Gripping my telescope tripod in both hands, I held it in front of me to form a barrier as the bear cannoned into me. Her huge head was level with my chest and shoulders, and the tripod lodged crossways in her mouth. She bit down and I found myself supporting her weight. I'm a big man, 6ft 3in and 280lb, but the bear was at least half as heavy again. I knew I wouldn't be able to hold her for long.​

- read the full article Experience: I punched a bear (from The Guardian)​

 

[Laurel]

I don’t know Bilal’s last name, yet he’s the person I have called in sickness and in health, who I’ve stuck with for better and for worse: my birthday, house parties, bad days at work, the day I quit my job. We commiserate when the government closes down cell phone services and Bilal can’t get any business, and he judges me for my taste in restaurants. “Is this where you’re having dinner?” was his disdainful response at my choice of restaurant – a mid-range eatery that’s far from being hip or cool—when I asked him to slash prices since it was my birthday.

What Bilal does is illegal on several levels: According to Pakistani law, he isn’t allowed to sell alcohol. And he definitely isn’t allowed to sell it to Muslims, who are barred from consuming or buying it. Foreign correspondents in Pakistan have consistently reminded us in clichéd dispatches – ‘ale under the veil’, anyone?— that despite being taboo, banned and haram, Pakistanis still like to drink (as if bootlegging doesn’t exist elsewhere or it’s surprising that we could have the urge to consume alcohol).

This makes Bilal one of the busiest men in Karachi. He races through residential neighborhoods in a beat-up car or a brand new Corolla (depending on which day you meet him) to answer the frantic calls of his customers.​

- read the full article Bootlegging in Karachi: A Sinner's Story (from Roads and Kingdoms)​

 

[Laurel]

http://thetalkhouse.com/assets/content/cache/made/assets/content/artist/Lou_Reed_1965BW_315_313_90auto_s_c1.jpghttp://thetalkhouse.com/assets/content/cache/made/assets/content/album/kanye-west-yeezus_315_313_90auto_s_c1.jpg

Kanye West is a child of social networking and hip-hop. And he knows about all kinds of music and popular culture. The guy has a real wide palette to play with. That's all over Yeezus. There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit. But the guy really, really, really is talented. He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet.

People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it's minimal. But the parts are maximal. Take "Blood on the Leaves." There's a lot going on there: horns, piano, bass, drums, electronic effects, all rhythmically matched — towards the end of the track, there's now twice as much sonic material. But Kanye stays unmoved while this mountain of sound grows around him. Such an enormous amount of work went into making this album. Each track is like making a movie.​

- read the full article Lou Reed Reviews 'Yeezus' (from The Talkhouse)​

 

[Laurel]

Inside a lab in Pisa, forensics pathologist Gino Fornaciari and his team investigate 500-year-old cold cases

The victim, it appeared, had suffered from several chronic and puzzling conditions. A CT scan and digital X-ray revealed a calcification of the knees, as well as a level of arthritis in elbows, hips and lumbar vertebrae surprisingly advanced for anyone this young. A bronchoscopy showed severe anthracosis, similar to black lung, although he hadn’t been a miner, or even a smoker. Histological analysis of liver cells detected advanced fibrosis, although he had never touched hard liquor. Yet Fornaciari, a professor in the medical school at the University of Pisa, saw that none of these conditions likely had killed him.

Of course, Fornaciari had heard rumors that the man had been poisoned, but he discounted them as probable fabrications. “I’ve worked on several cases where there were rumors of poisonings and dark plots,” Fornaciari told me later. “They usually turn out to be just that, mere legends, which fall apart under scientific scrutiny.” He recited the victim’s symptoms in Latin, just as he had read them in a medieval chronicle: corporei fluxus stomachique doloris acuti . . . et febre ob laborem exercitus: “ diarrhea and acute stomach pains, belly disturbances . . . and fever from his labors with the army.”

Gino Fornaciari is no ordinary medical examiner; his bodies represent cold cases that are centuries, sometimes millennia, old. As head of a team of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, historians of medicine and additional specialists at the University of Pisa, he is a pioneer in the burgeoning field of paleopathology, the use of state-of-the-art medical technology and forensic techniques to investigate the lives and deaths of illustrious figures of the past.​

- read the full article CSI: Italian Renaissance (from Smithsonian Magazine)​

 

[Laurel]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/07/09/business/FOOD-A/FOOD-A-articleLarge.jpg

From 2010 to 2012, sales of ethnic foods rose 4.5 percent, to $8.7 billion. The Mintel Group, a market research firm, estimates that between 2012 and 2017 sales of ethnic foods in grocery stores will grow more than 20 percent. Mintel predicts Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foods will increase the most in that time in terms of dollar sales.

So a soup as mainstream as Campbell’s tomato now comes in a version spiked with coconut and lemon grass, and quinoa replaces noodles in a new chicken soup. Frito-Lay has turned up the heat in Doritos with its Flamas variety, which combines red chilies and lime, while McDonald’s asks “Zing! Can you handle it?” when advertising its new bacon habanero ranch quarter-pounder.

Consider the soaring popularity of Jarritos, the Mexican fruit-flavored soda in brilliant hues rarely found in nature, at a time when carbonated soda sales are declining over all.

“We knew we were strong among Hispanics,” said David Flynn, marketing director of Novamex, which makes and sells Jarritos outside Mexico. “But we were surprised to find that among non-Hispanics, people really loved certain things about the brand — the fruit flavors, the glass bottle, the natural sugar.”​

- read the full article American Tastes Branch Out, and Food Makers Follow (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

Even People Who Lack Ideas Can Set the Scene for Inspiration; Just Walk Away

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Why is it that some people rack their brains for new ideas, only to come up empty—while others seem to shake them almost effortlessly out of their sleeves?

Whether creativity is an innate gift or a cognitive process that anyone can jump-start is a question so intriguing that researchers keep studying it from different angles and discovering new and surprising techniques.

Several recent studies suggest that the best route to an "aha moment" involves stepping away from the grindstone—whether it's taking a daydream break, belting back a drink or two or simply gazing at something green.​

- read the full article Tactics to Spark Creativity (from The Wall Street Journal)​

 

[blackleggings]

Bumping this because it's an awesome story.

You're right. This is an awesome story. I love this:

“The way I look at it, life is meaningless,” Everman said the last time I saw him. “The meaningfulness is what you impart to it.”

 

[Laurel]

“The way I look at it, life is meaningless,” Everman said the last time I saw him. “The meaningfulness is what you impart to it.”

Yes!!

And this:

In Everman’s cabin, I saw medal after medal, including the coveted Combat Infantryman Badge. “Sounds kind of Boy Scouty,” he said. “But it’s actually something cool.” I saw photos of Everman in fatigues on a warship (“an antipiracy operation in Asia”). A shot of Everman with Donald Rumsfeld. Another with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. And that’s when it hit me. Jason Everman had finally become a rock star.

Sometimes 'failure' leads to something much, much bigger, more important.

 

[Laurel]

What’s the best sentence ever formed?

That was the topic of a recent Quora forum (by the way may I officially announce that Quora seems to have succeeded? Would it be so bad to spend less time with your Google Reader and more time browsing Quora?), and here was the top pick:

“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.”

(Dmitri Borgmann, Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities. Scribner, 1965)

This is a ‘rhopalic’ sentence: A sentence or a line of poetry in which each word contains one letter or one syllable more than the previous word.​

- read the full article (with the runner-up sentences, which are fun as well) What’s the best sentence ever formed? (from Marginal Revolution)​

 

[Laurel]

http://media.theweek.com/img/dir_0100/50318_article_full/an-ntsb-investigator-examines-scattered-debris-at-the-scene-of-the-asiana-airlines-crash.jpg?175

There were two fatal airplane accidents over the weekend: Asiana Airlines Flight 214's crash landing in San Francisco killed two passengers, while the fiery crash of an air taxi in Alaska claimed the lives of all 10 people on board. The twin tragedies have raised questions about the safety of air travel, but experts say that passengers can rest assured that flying is safer now than it has ever been.

One reason is that aircraft — especially large commercial airliners like Asiana's Boeing 777 — are structurally more sound than ever. Another is that improved cockpit technology has made collisions less likely. Large crashes are still big news, but that is partly because they're so infrequent. Here is a look at the record, by the numbers:
...
1 in 1.2 million
Airplane flights that involve some kind of accident. The mishaps are not always fatal.

1 in 3.7 million
Chance that you will be killed by a shark.

1 in 11 million
Chance that you will be killed in an airplane crash.

1 in 5,000
Odds that you will be killed in a car crash. "You're much more likely to die getting to the airport than you are flying in the plane," said the editors at Discovery.
...​

- read the full article The odds are 11 million to 1 that you'll die in a plane crash (from The Week)​

 

[Laurel]

http://images.nymag.com/news/features/suicide080519_560.jpg

In a sense, New York City is unremarkable when it comes to suicide. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 32,637 people died by suicide in the United States in 2005, the most recent year for which figures exist. It’s the third leading cause of death for Americans ages 15 to 24, the fourth leading cause for Americans 18 to 65. New York State had the country’s third-lowest per capita suicide rate in 2005 (6.2 per 100,000); only New Jersey (6.1) and Washington, D.C., (6) had lower rates. (Montana tops the list, with a rate of 22, followed by several other western states.) Between 1990 and 2004, suicide rates in cities such as Miami, Las Vegas, Sacramento, and Pittsburgh dwarfed New York’s, according to a report called “Big Cities Health Inventory 2007” from the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Of the cities included, only Boston, Baltimore, and Washington ranked lower in 2004. Within the city, Manhattan had a rate of 7.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2005, higher than the other boroughs (Brooklyn had the fewest, at 4.64), but lower than many upstate regions.

Recently, however, researchers stumbled on a striking fact about suicides in New York: A surprising number of people who kill themselves in the city come here from out of town, and many appear to come expressly to take their own lives. In a report published last fall called “Suicide Tourism in Manhattan, New York City, 1990–2004,” researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College found that of the 7,634 people who committed suicide in New York City between 1990 and 2004, 407 of them, or 5.3 percent, were nonresidents. More strikingly, nonresidents accounted for 274, or 10.8 percent, of the 2,272 suicides in Manhattan during that time (the numbers did not include college students, who were considered residents for the purposes of the study). The researchers didn’t look at comparable data from other cities, but, says the study’s lead author, Charles Gross, “One in ten people that commit suicide in Manhattan don’t live here. That’s a big chunk.”​

- read the full article The Mysteries of the Suicide Tourist (from NYMag)​

 

[Laurel]

The first thing I should point out, is that movies are almost NEVER shot in chronological order, or in other words, in sequence of the events as they would unfold or "script order." This is pretty common knowledge, but don't beat yourself up if you didn't know already. For Dolly Parton's first motion picture (Nine to Five), she memorized the entire script, including the other characters' lines. Apparently, after letting on that she thought movies were filmed in chronological order, co-star Lily Tomlin burst out laughing.

Movies are shot out of sequence for a number of reasons. Among these reasons are; renting out locations or studio space, lighting, weather conditions, and most importantly, the availability of an actor. All of these basically boil down to time and money.
...

https://static.squarespace.com/static/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/51ce6099e4b0d911b4489b79/51ce61ede4b0d911b44a6452/1347994552026/1000w/American-Graffiti-Chronological.jpg

American Graffiti (1973)

After struggling to find commercial success with THX 1138, director George Lucas drew on his own experiences as a teenager in the 1960's era of cruising to make a film with broader appeal to general audiences. American Graffiti takes place within one night. In order to get the characters to look increasingly tired as the night went on, Lucas decided to film in chronological order. Unaware of the reason behind shooting in script order, Ron Howard initially felt that this was an insult towards his and the other actors' professionalism. Oddly enough, as a director, Howard would receive much of the same criticism for shooting A Beautiful Mind in sequence.

Additional Note: Apparently Lucas had quite the rowdy cast on his hands. Harrison Ford, Paul Le Mat and Bo Hopkins would often get drunk between takes and have climbing competitions to the top of a local Holiday Inn sign. Ford was arrested in a bar fight and kicked out of his hotel, and Richard Dreyfuss gashed his forehead the day before a close up when Le Mat threw him into a swimming pool. On top of all that, one of the cast members set fire to Lucas' motel room.​

- read the full article Movies That Were Shot in Chronological Order (from Geekty Rant)​

 

[trysail]

Cool graph and an interesting essay

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/driving-shifts-into-reverse.jpg



Pump Price, Miles Driven and Energy Taxes
by Willis Eschenbach

 

[Laurel]

http://www.gq.com/images/news-and-politics/2012/03/zoo-escape/lion-628.jpg

The miracle of the great Zanesville zoo escape—which began last fall when a depressed, desperate man named Terry Thompson set free his vast collection of exotic animals—was that not a single innocent person was hurt. The incident made global news. It also thrust into daylight, if only for a brief moment, a secret world of privately owned exotic animals living off the grid, and often right next door. We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things are—and what the hell they're doing there.​

- read the full article 18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio (from GQ)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/desert-bus-580.jpg

Morgan van Humbeck completed his shift in front of the television and passed out. Ten minutes later, his cell phone woke him. “Morgan, this is Teller,” said a small voice on the other end of the line. “Fuck off,” replied Morgan in disbelief. He hung up the phone and went back to sleep.

* * *

The drive from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, takes approximately eight hours when travelling in a vehicle whose top speed is forty-five miles per hour. In Desert Bus, an unreleased video game from 1995 conceived by the American illusionists and entertainers Penn Jillette and Teller, players must complete that journey in real time. Finishing a single leg of the trip requires considerable stamina and concentration in the face of arch boredom: the vehicle constantly lists to the right, so players cannot take their hands off the virtual wheel; swerving from the road will cause the bus’s engine to stall, forcing the player to be towed back to the beginning. The game cannot be paused. The bus carries no virtual passengers to add human interest, and there is no traffic to negotiate. The only scenery is the odd sand-pocked rock or road sign. Players earn a single point for each eight-hour trip completed between the two cities, making a Desert Bus high score perhaps the most costly in gaming.

Van Humbeck, unconscious on the couch, had just contributed to what was then a Desert Bus world record of five points.

Whenever Penn and Teller were booked to appear on the David Letterman show, a close friend, Eddie Gorodetsky, the Emmy Award–winning television writer whose credits include “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “Saturday Night Live,” would visit their office and pretend to be Letterman to help them prepare. During one of these rehearsals, the trio came up with the concept of a video game that could work as a satire against the anti-video-game lobby.​

- read the full article Desert Bus: The Very Worst Video Game Ever Created (from The New Yorker)​

 

[SkAoUt]

Your Lou Reed reviewing Kayne Wests album Yeezus link didn't work.

http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/lou-reed

Your link to the article about Jason Everman was sweet. What a life. I sorta wish they delved into a bit more of a after effects of being in combat and how he was dealing with that shit.

 

[Laurel]

Your Lou Reed reviewing Kayne Wests album Yeezus link didn't work.

http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/lou-reed

Your link to the article about Jason Everman was sweet. What a life. I sorta wish they delved into a bit more of a after effects of being in combat and how he was dealing with that shit.

Oops! Thanks - fixed.

Yeah, Jason Everman should write a book, seriously. But he doesn't seem like the talkative type. Maybe - hopefully - someday he'll sit down and put his whole life adventure down in print.

 

[Laurel]

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02613/Ahmed-Assem1_2613335c.jpg

He fires more than once and then, suddenly, turns the rifle and points toward the camera lens.

The film ends – and so too ended the life of Ahmed Samir Assem.

The 26-year-old photographer for Egypt’s Al-Horia Wa Al-Adala newspaper was among a least 51 people killed after security forces opened fire on a large crowd that had camped outside the Egyptian army’s Republican Guard officers’ club in Cairo, where Mohammed Morsi, the deposed president, was believed to be in detention.

Mr Assem had been on the scene as the pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters knelt for prayer shortly before dawn on Monday morning.

According to friends and relatives, the moment of his own death was captured as the grainy film culminates.​

- read the full article Ahmed Assem: the Egyptian photographer who chronicled his own death (from The Telegraph)​

 

[Laurel]

You don't know his name, and you've never seen his face. But this year, as America leaves Iraq for good after eight years of war, we also leave behind a man believed by our military and intelligence agencies to be the best terrorist hunter alive. He's still there, hunting. And so are the terrorists.

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/mI/esq-iraq-terrorist-hunter-0311-lg.jpg

Omar Mohammed hunts terrorists in Baghdad. Hunts them and kills them. A few months ago, he killed two big guys in Al Qaeda — Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the two most-wanted terrorists in all of Iraq. But when you hunt Al Qaeda, they also hunt you. The more you kill them, the more they want to kill you. They've shot Omar, blown him up, and killed dozens of his men.

Omar is a senior officer in the Iraqi Counterterrorism Unit. He was doing police work when the Americans invaded in 2003, and he volunteered his services to the occupiers as the insurgent war overwhelmed the American presence, enveloping them in a kind of warfare for which they were not prepared. To America's military and to many intelligence operatives in Washington and in Iraq, Omar is the best terrorist hunter alive. His photo has never been published. His face doesn't exist in any database linked to his real name. It's a broad, handsome face, and he's thick as a bull across the neck and shoulders.​

- read the full article The Hunter Becomes the Hunted (from Esquire)​

 

[Colonel Hogan]

You don't know his name, and you've never seen his face. But this year, as America leaves Iraq for good after eight years of war, we also leave behind a man believed by our military and intelligence agencies to be the best terrorist hunter alive. He's still there, hunting. And so are the terrorists.

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/mI/esq-iraq-terrorist-hunter-0311-lg.jpg

Omar Mohammed hunts terrorists in Baghdad. Hunts them and kills them. A few months ago, he killed two big guys in Al Qaeda — Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the two most-wanted terrorists in all of Iraq. But when you hunt Al Qaeda, they also hunt you. The more you kill them, the more they want to kill you. They've shot Omar, blown him up, and killed dozens of his men.

Omar is a senior officer in the Iraqi Counterterrorism Unit. He was doing police work when the Americans invaded in 2003, and he volunteered his services to the occupiers as the insurgent war overwhelmed the American presence, enveloping them in a kind of warfare for which they were not prepared. To America's military and to many intelligence operatives in Washington and in Iraq, Omar is the best terrorist hunter alive. His photo has never been published. His face doesn't exist in any database linked to his real name. It's a broad, handsome face, and he's thick as a bull across the neck and shoulders.​

- read the full article The Hunter Becomes the Hunted (from Esquire)​

WOW! Just.....WOW!

 

[Laurel]

It's been 14 years, wow

http://www.theweeklings.com/wp-content/uploads/Morphine-Live-@-Westbeth-Theatre-New-York-USA-29-10-1996-180x180.jpg

ON JULY 3, 1999, Mark Sandman, frontman of the band Morphine, collapsed and died on stage during a show in a small town in central Italy. Word trickled slowly back to the States, in those days of the not-yet-omnipotent Internet. What I heard is that he died of a cocaine-related heart attack on stage in Rome. This narrative had all the elements of the classic rock-star death: drugs, self-destruction, fan involvement, exotic foreign city, an air of mystery. Bucky Wunderlick would approve.

Because the band was named for a drug, and because there is an overt reference to drug use in “Cure For Pain,” Morphine’s signature song (insofar as they had one), I assumed, as many fans did, that the rumors were true, that cocaine contributed to Sandman’s death. For one thing, it made the story sexier. For another, it offered an explanation for why an apparently-healthy 46-year-old man of great energy and vitality would suddenly and unexpectedly die.

“Rock Star Dies of Cocaine Heart Failure in Rome.” A nice headline, but a deceptive one. Sandman was many things, genius among them, but he was not a rock star, as such. He didn’t die in Rome, but in Palestrina, an ancient outpost 40 miles to the east. And the only drug in his system that fateful night was nicotine. The muggy Italian summer had more to do with his demise than cocaine. So did stress—ironic, because Sandman’s stage persona was as laid-back as it gets.

No, Sandman was victim of a pedestrian heart attack, at the worst possible moment. That there were no drugs involved makes his death less “rock star,” but more tragic.​

- read the full article Only One Cure For Pain: Morphine and Mark Sandman, 14 Years Gone (from The Weeklings)​