I have to note this one: Kathryn Popper has passed away at the age of 100.
Ms. Popper had a very small, almost microscopic, role in “Citizen Kane
According to the NYT, she was the last surviving person to have appeared in the film: Jean Forward Baker, who dubbed Susan Alexander’s voice, is still alive.
I’m guessing this
Also among the dead: George Martin, noted record producer, perhaps most famous for his work producing an overrated mediocre band with a few toe-tappers.
I know I keep using this excuse, but it really was a busy weekend. I spent a large chunk of Saturday babysitting children, away from a computer I could use. I may write some later on about how I spent my Sunday, but not right now; also, I wanted to let the Nancy Reagan obits sit for a day.
Catching up from the weekend and for the historical record: Pat Conroy. NYT. WP. A/V Club. Charleston Post and Courier.
I’ve read very little of Conroy’s work: The Prince of Tides
And I have to confess: I’m a sucker for crap like this
We’re coming up on at least two significant anniversaries this year.
One of those is the 100th birthday of John D. MacDonald on July 24th. I plan to write more about this closer to the event. In the meantime, here are a couple of links I like:
From the “National Post”: “Sunbelt Baroque: How John D. MacDonald invented a subgenre that’s no longer his own”.
(Well, of course it’s no longer his own. He died almost 30 years ago.)
Stephen King’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune essay about MacDonald. I think Big Steve and I first encountered John D. at about the same age. This may explain some things.
(I really wish the Herald-Tribune would make it easier to find these columns. It looks like this link will bring them up, along with some unrelated stuff.)
And the other significant anniversary? June 25th will mark the 110th anniversary of the murder of Stanford White by Harry Kendall Thaw. That’s something I want to write more about as well, but it needs research. I’d appreciate book recommendations, if folks have them.
(You know, you would think you could find this on the Internet, but I’ve had no luck: what was the weapon Thaw used? The only description I’ve been able to find is that it was a “pistol”.)
(Teaser.)
Two from the NYT:
Save the endangered Long Island skeet!
Harper Lee was a big fan of Opus. Yes, the penguin, from “Bloom County”.
Borepatch left a most gracious note on the last obit watch, which was much appreciated. I’ve been feeling like all I do is write obit watches these days. It also feels kind of lazy sometimes; but I like to think that there’s some historical value, if not now perhaps in the next few years, in noting these deaths and how they were covered.
And every once in a while you find an obit for someone who didn’t get the attention that Harper Lee or Scalia got, but deserves some attention. Speaking of that…
And speaking of lazy, I do have some longer pieces I want to write. Some of them are still in draft status, waiting for things to come together. Then there are some things that I expected to be able to write longer form entries about that just haven’t materialized yet.
I’d love to be able to write about my ongoing experiences with the Austin Police Department Citizen’s Police Academy, for example. But we’re only two sessions in and the first one was mostly back-patting. I’m hoping that there will be things that are worth writing about (and that I can write about without breaking any rules) soon. (If you’re really interested in the actual police academy and the training process, there’s a set of videos up on YouTube.)
Quick movie note: Lawrence and I went to see “Hail, Caesar!” yesterday. Lawrence liked it more than I did. I don’t think it is a bad movie, but it seemed slight and insubstantial.
We watched “Burn After Reading” a few weeks ago, and I liked that a little more: it may have something to do with almost everyone in “Burn” being utterly insane. (Especially John Malkovich’s character; but then, Malkovich adds that extra special touch to everything he’s in. I’m still not going to see “Zoolander 2”, though.)
TL,DR: wait for “Hail, Ceaser!” on streaming.
I wonder what’s going to happen to that. Did he leave it to some institution, or is there going to be a massive auction?
Short shameful confession: For reasons I don’t recall, I saw (and liked!) the film version of “The Name of the Rose”, but I haven’t gotten around to reading the book, or any other Eco. I keep meaning to fix that…
For the record: NYT obit for David Hartwell.
This has a February 3rd dateline on it, but I did not see it on the NYT website until today.
NYT obit. 1981 profile from the New Yorker by Jeremy Bernstein.
Dr. Minsky was another of my personal heroes that I never got to meet. I first read about him in the pages of Hackers, which was a Christmas gift from my mother one year (and about which I’ve written before).
Later on, I got interested in AI, which led me again to Minsky by way of The Society of Mind. (Which, oddly enough, I have also touched on before.)
I wish that I had more to say, but I’m struggling to find words right now. (I blame this mostly on allergies.)
David Hartwell, noted science fiction editor and personality, has died.
SF Signal. Scott Edelman. Lawrence. Kathryn Cramer.
I’ll leave it to others to discuss and dissect his impact on the field. I did not know him well. I was at a few conventions with him, and I think maybe he could have picked me out of a police lineup. But in the limited interactions I had with him, and what I saw of his interactions with others, he came across as one of the nicest people in the world. I think it is fair to say that he was a gentle man, and a gentleman.
The world is a lesser place today.
Florence King: NYT.
The cultural boils Miss King sought so vigorously to lance included:
Political correctness; feminism (“Feminists will not be satisfied,” she wrote, “until every abortion is performed by a gay black doctor under an endangered tree on a reservation for handicapped Indians”); environmentalism; the antismoking lobby; sentiment; intimacy; weakness; special pleading; lack of breeding (“No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street”); gay liberation; far rightism; far leftism; mild to moderate leftism; democracy (“I believe in a Republic of Merit in which water is allowed to find its own level, where voters, like drivers, are tested before being turned loose”); the Constitution; children (“In order to molest a child you must first be in the same room with a child, and I don’t know how perverts stand it”); the human race.
WP.
Angus Scrimm also passed away over the weekend. He knocked around quite a bit, doing guest shots on various TV series (including “Alias” and “Trapper John M.D.”) and movies. He was perhaps best known as “The Tall Man” from the “Phantasm” movies. Interestingly, he also wrote liner notes for Capitol Records:
I’m still kind of hoping for an obituary from a more mainstream news source, but Florence King, writer and National Review columnist, has died. Tributes from Tam and Lawrence.
This was a little surprising:
Amen. Florence King was the cat's meow, which would have meant something to her. https://t.co/8MVKXMs1M9
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) January 7, 2016
I’m not going to say she was as influential on my writing as P.J.: I came to her relatively late in life. But she was a damn funny writer (even if I can’t quote some of my favorite lines here), and the world is a lesser place for her passing. Frankly, we could do a lot worse than a monarchy. Especially one run by Florence King.
Interesting career. He started out on “The Jack Paar Show” (or “The Steve Allen Show”, depending on which obit you read).
Of course, he was most famous as Schneider on “One Day at a Time”.
Ashraf Pahlavi, sister of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Really? I wonder where the NYT got access to this “internal secret history”.
…on December 29, 1915, Robert Chester Ruark, Jr. was born.
I’ve been threatening to tell this one for a while now. What pushed me over the edge was this (because, hey, Christmas story), and a conversation with my mother about the first “Star Wars”, which filled me with nostalgia. (Or that may have been indigestion from a combination of three cup chicken and the pills I’m taking; sometimes, I can’t tell the difference.)
(We were trying to reconstruct the circumstances around seeing “Star Wars”. My father took my sister and I to the theater at Greenspoint Mall in Houston (which was the closest good one) to see it first run. My younger brother didn’t go with us, because he was roughly 2 1/2. So the questions that came up were: what did we do with him, and when did he first see it? I always thought my dad took us as just a nice gesture, while my mother thinks she had a Tupperware party going on that night and wanted to get us out of the house.)
End of introductory digression.
One year, over the Christmas break from school, I decided I wanted to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Anyway, I checked it out of the school library and brought it home with me.
Speaking of Ross Thomas, I’ve been meaning to link to (and bookmark) Ethan Iverson’s “Ah, Treachery!” essay for a while now. There are a few things in it that I disagree with, but I think Iverson’s essay is generally perceptive about Thomas and his writing; I find myself referring to it periodically.
Young Joseph Wambaugh and the hobo, from the LAT.
Dave Barry’s year in review, in case you haven’t seen it yet.
For the record: NYT obit for Joe Jamail.
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Eden Pearl.
Sgt. Pearl was critically injured by an IED in 2009, and died on Sunday as a result of his injuries.
Fernande Grudet, aka “Madame Claude”. I note this here for two reasons:
1) Hookersnblow.org.
2) In one of my favorite Ross Thomas books, The Seersucker Whipsaw