Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

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Obit watch: May 27, 2021.

Thursday, May 27th, 2021

Eric Carle, children’s book author. He was perhaps most famous for “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.

Noted:

But, as Mr. Carle told The New York Times in 2007, disaster struck when his father was drafted into the German army and soon became a prisoner of war in Russia. Eric, who was then 15, managed to avoid the draft but was conscripted by the Nazi government to dig trenches on the Siegfried line, a 400-mile defensive line in western Germany.
“In Stuttgart, our hometown, our house was the only one standing,” Mr. Carle told The Guardian in 2009. “When I say standing, I mean the roof and windows are gone, and the doors. And … well, there you are.”

Kevin Clark. He was the drummer in “School of Rock”. According to reports, he was hit and killed while riding his bicycle home.

Samuel Wright. He voiced “Sebastian” in “The Little Mermaid”, and also did a lot of Broadway work. He also played “Mufasa” in the original cast of “The Lion King” on Broadway.

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 26, 2021.

Wednesday, May 26th, 2021

Somewhat breaking news: John Warner, former Senator from Virginia and Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband.

Though a popular figure in his state, Mr. Warner was often at odds with Virginia conservatives. He became the Republican nominee in his first campaign only after the man who had defeated him at a state party convention was killed in a plane crash.
He angered the National Rifle Association with his backing of an assault weapons ban. He infuriated some state Republicans in 1994 when he refused to support Oliver L. North, the former White House aide at the center of the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration, in Mr. North’s bid for the Senate. And he opposed Reagan’s ultimately unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork.

Edited to add: My mother and stepfather lived in Virginia during part of the time John Warner was a senator. My mother is kind of upset at the press coverage: she feels it focuses too much on Sen. Warner being Number Six in the long line of Liz’s husbands, and not enough on his accomplishments as a Senator. One of the things she mentioned to me: there was a time when they were having trouble getting money out of SSI for my stepfather. She called Senator Warner’s office and spoke to one of his people, who said, “Oh, I know somebody over there. Let me make some calls.”

They had their check two days later.

Roger Hawkins, noted drummer.

An innately soulful musician, Mr. Hawkins initially distinguished himself in the mid-’60s as a member of the house band at the producer Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. (The initials stand for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises.) His colleagues were the keyboardist Barry Beckett, the guitarist Jimmy Johnson and Mr. Hood, who played bass. Mr. Hood is the last surviving member of that rhythm section.
Mr. Hawkins’s less-is-more approach to drumming at FAME — often little more than a cymbal and a snare — can be heard on Percy Sledge’s gospel-steeped “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a No. 1 pop single in 1966. He was also a driving force behind Aretha Franklin’s imperious “Respect,” a No. 1 pop hit the next year, as well as her Top 10 singles “Chain of Fools” (1967) and “Think” (1968).

…

In 1969 Mr. Hawkins and the other members of the FAME rhythm section parted ways with Mr. Hall over a financial dispute. They soon opened their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, in a former coffin warehouse in nearby Sheffield.
Renaming themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the four men appeared on many other hits over the next decade, including the Staple Singers’ chart-topping pop-gospel single “I’ll Take You There,” a 1972 recording galvanized by Mr. Hawkins’s skittering Caribbean-style drum figure. They also appeared, along with the gospel quartet the Dixie Hummingbirds, on Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like a Rock,” a Top 10 single in 1973.
Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Hood worked briefly with the British rock band Traffic as well; they are on the band’s 1973 album, “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory.”
Mr. Hawkins and his colleagues became known as the Swampers after the producer Denny Cordell heard the pianist Leon Russell commend them for their “funky, soulful Southern swamp sound.” The Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd mentioned them, by that name, in their 1974 pop hit “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 9, 2021.

Sunday, May 9th, 2021

Tawny Kitaen, 80s figure.

With her flowing red hair and acrobatic moves, Ms. Kitaen appeared in videos for bands like Whitesnake and Ratt, coming across as both sultry and playful. She famously danced on the hood of a white Jaguar in the music video for Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” and graced the cover of Ratt’s 1984 album, “Out of the Cellar.”

She once described working with Paula Abdul, who was a choreographer at the time, on the set of one video.
As Ms. Kitaen recalled, Ms. Abdul asked her what she could do, and Ms. Kitaen showed Ms. Abdul some of her moves. Ms. Abdul then turned to the director, Marty Callner, and said, “She’s got this and doesn’t need me.” And then, Ms. Kitaen said, she left.
“That was the greatest compliment,” she said. “So I got on the cars and Marty would say, ‘Action,’ and I’d do whatever I felt like doing.”

…

She married David Coverdale, the frontman of Whitesnake, in 1989. The couple divorced two years later. In 1997, she married Chuck Finley, a pitcher with the Anaheim Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). They had two daughters, Wynter and Raine. The couple divorced in 2002.

Tawny Finley, in a declaration to the Orange County Superior Court, claimed Finley used steroids among other drugs. She also claimed he bragged about being able to circumvent MLB’s testing policy. When told of his wife’s accusations, which also included heavy marijuana use and alcohol abuse, Finley replied: “I can’t believe she left out the cross-dressing.”

Ed Ward, music critic. He wrote for “Crawdaddy” and “Rolling Stone”:

Mr. Ward’s review of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” (1969) in Rolling Stone demonstrated his tough side: He called “Sun King” the album’s “biggest bomb” and its second side “a disaster.”
“They’ve been shucking us a lot lately and it’s a shame because they don’t have to,” he wrote. “Surely they have enough talent and intelligence to do better than this. Or do they?”

…

Mr. Ward was fired from Rolling Stone after a few months (he didn’t get along with Jann Wenner, the publisher), then became the West Coast correspondent for the rock magazine Creem, a post he held for most of the 1970s. He left in 1979 to write about the thriving music scene in Austin as a music critic at The American-Statesman.
“Ed brought a reputation to Austin as an unflinching critic — Rolling Stone had a lot of clout — and he was not diplomatic in his writing,” said his friend and fellow writer Joe Nick Patoski, who described Mr. Ward as cantankerous and difficult. “Early on, there was a reaction to some of the things he wrote and it started a ‘Dump Ed Ward’ movement that had bumper stickers and T shirts.”

…

Over the next decade, Mr. Ward was a music and food critic (sometimes, while he was still at The American-Statesman, under the pseudonym Petaluma Pete) for the alternative weekly The Austin Chronicle; one of three authors of “Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll” (1986), in which he focused on the 1950s; and, in 1987, one of several founders of the South by Southwest music, film and technology festival in Austin.

…

He returned to Austin in 2013 and set to work on “The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963,” which was published in 2016. A second volume, taking the music’s history up to 1977, was published in 2019. But his publisher declined to publish a third one because the second book’s sales had not been as good the first one’s.

Ernest Angley, televangelist. Or, as I liked to call him, “the man who took over Rex Humbard’s soup kitchen“.

These last two by way of Lawrence: George Jung, cocaine smuggler.

Japanese composer Shunsuke Kikuchi. Among his credits: “Dragon Ball”, “Dragon Ball Z”, and several “Gamera” films.

Posted in Books, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 7, 2021.

Friday, May 7th, 2021

This has been well covered locally (and on ESPN) but for the historical record: Jake Ehlinger, linebacker for UT, was found dead in his apartment yesterday. He was 20 years old.

This one is for Lawrence: Milva. I’d never heard of her, either, but she was apparently a very prominent Italian singer.

Her deep, powerful voice garnered attention. But her short brown hair and slight build were far from the thick manes and full hourglass figures then in demand.
To compensate, she padded her bras and thickened her legs with three pairs of stockings. An agent recommended that she dye her hair red, a color that became her trademark and earned her the nickname La Rossa, or the Redhead.

NYT obit for Johnny Crawford.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 3, 2021.

Monday, May 3rd, 2021

Getting caught up:

Pete Lammons, tight end for the New York Jets. He was 77, and participating in a fishing tournament in East Texas.

Major League Fishing, the sponsor of the tournament, said that Lammons, who was participating in the event, had fallen out of his boat on the Sam Rayburn Reservoir, a popular spot for bass fishing, and that the other man in the boat tried to rescue him. A team equipped with sonar recovered Lammons’s body a few hours later.

Olympia Dukakis, for the historical record. THR. Variety.

Jill Corey. This was a little before my time, but still an interesting story. She grew up in Avonmore, Pennsylvania (literally a coal miner’s daughter) but was discovered at 17 and went on to a career in music.

Before the end of the decade, Ms. Corey had a spot on the “Johnny Carson Show” (a variety show precursor to his late-night talk show) and the NBC series “Your Hit Parade,” in which a regular cast of vocalists sang the top-rated songs of the week.
For a time Ms. Corey even had her own show, 15 minutes of song that followed the news once a week, a programming format that placed many popular singers in similar slots across the networks.
She recorded many records and performed at Manhattan nightclubs like the Copacabana and the Blue Angel. (Mr. Miller, in tight control of her career, turned down Broadway roles for her because her nightclub work was more lucrative.) And she was courted by heartthrobs like Eddie Fisher and Frank Sinatra (as he and Ava Gardner were divorcing).
She also made a “terrible movie,” in her words, called “Senior Prom” (1958).

In one of those odd cases that seem so common during that decade, where the line between “romance” and “creepy stalking” becomes blurred, she was pursued by Don Hoak of the Pittsburgh Pirates (even though she was already engaged) and married him in 1961. She gave up singing, but Mr. Hoak died in 1969 and she went back to performing.

Posted in Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 26, 2021.

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Les McKeown, of the Bay City Rollers.

I have not found a mainstream source for this yet, but it seems to have been confirmed in various places: Dan Kaminsky, noted security researcher.

His politics were not mine, and he was not a personal friend or even acquaintance of mine. But I was lucky enough to see him speak at DEFCON and Black Hat a few times, and the guy was wicked smart. Especially when it came to TCP/IP and DNS: man probably forgot more about DNS than I’ll ever know. (One of my favorite talks involved him demonstrating how he could run streaming audio, in real-time, over the Internet…by embedding data in DNS queries. I believe this was that talk.)

There’s a good Hacker News thread here, and an obit from The Register here.

When your Register hack asked Kaminsky why he hadn’t gone to the dark side and used the flaw to become immensely wealthy – either by exploiting it to hijack millions of netizens’ web traffic, or by selling details of it to the highest bidders – he said not only would that have been morally wrong, he didn’t want his mom to have to visit him in prison.

The Reg obit also includes a link to a playlist of Mr. Kaminsky’s talks on YouTube.

Posted in DEFCON, Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 21, 2021.

Wednesday, April 21st, 2021

Jim Steinman.

He had a fascinating career, which is detailed to some extent in his Wikipedia entry.

Todd Rundgren eventually agreed to produce the record, but no big label wanted it; Mr. Sonenberg often joked that he thought people were creating new record labels just for the purpose of rejecting “Bat Out of Hell.” Eventually Cleveland International Records, a small label distributed by CBS, took a chance.

One little known fact: he was working on a “Batman” musical. A stage musical, not a movie musical. But there were plans for Tim Burton to direct.

Steinman said about Burton and the project, “It’s more like his first two movies than any of the other movies. It’s very dark and gothic, but really wildly funny. It was my dream that he do this.”

I think a musical interlude is fitting here.

Monte Hellman, director. We haven’t seen “Two Lane Blacktop” yet, but we have watched “Cockfighter”. I can really only recommend that one to fans of Charles Willeford, but it seems like there are a lot of those folks out there…

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 19, 2021.

Monday, April 19th, 2021

Marie Supikova has passed on at 88.

She was one of a small number of survivors of Lidice.

Mrs. Supikova was 10 when Nazi forces arrived in Lidice, a village of about 500, on June 9, 1942. They were bent on avenging an attack by Czech parachutists on Reinhard Heydrich, a principal architect of the “final solution,” the Nazis’ plan to annihilate the Jewish people, which led to his death on June 4.
Looking to eradicate Lidice (LID-it-seh), the Nazis destroyed all the village’s buildings. They killed nearly 200 men, including Mrs. Supikova’s father, by a firing squad against a barn wall cushioned by mattresses. The women, including Mrs. Supikova’s mother, were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany.

…

While there, she was one of seven children chosen because of their appearance to be re-educated as Germans (the others were sent to gas chambers). They were moved to a school near Poznan, Poland, where they stayed for about a year until they were adopted by German couples.
Her new parents, Alfred and Ilsa Schiller, gave Marie a new name, Ingeborg Schiller, and a tiny room behind the kitchen in their home in Poznan. In an article in The New Yorker in 1948, Mrs. Supikova recalled that the Schillers had argued about her presence in the household.
“You and your Party friends!” she quoted Mrs. Schiller saying. “Why did they pick you to take this girl?” Mr. Schiller, she said, shouted back, “They have ordered us to make a German woman out of her and we are going to do it.”

After the war, she was reunited with her mother, who was dying of TB. (Her brother was also executed by the Nazis.)

She bore witness to her Holocaust experience when she testified in October 1947 at the Nuremberg trial of members of the SS Race and Resettlement Main Office. Then only 15, Marie was one of three people — two teenagers and one middle-aged woman — to testify that day about the massacre and their lives afterward.

…

Before Mrs. Supikova’s mother died, she took her daughter to the ruins of Lidice.
“She told Marie, ‘We’re going to see your father,’” said Elizabeth Clark, a retired journalism lecturer at Texas State University, San Marcos, who is writing about Lidice for a faculty writing project. “Marie didn’t understand at first that they were going to the mass grave where he had been buried.”

Rusty Young, one of the founding members of Poco. I feel like I’m giving him short shrift, and perhaps tim will weigh in on this one. Poco was just a little before my time.

Catching up on a couple from the past few days when I’ve been tied up: Helen McCrory, “Harry Potter” and “Peaky Blinders” actress. She also did quite a bit of work in British theater.

Felix Silla. He was “Cousin Itt” on “The Adams Family”, and (as I understand it) played the physical role of “Twiki” on “Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century”. (Mel Blanc did the voice.)

McThag also did a nice tribute to him.

Posted in History, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 6, 2021.

Tuesday, April 6th, 2021

Breaking news, by way of Lawrence, and only from two sources at the moment: Alcee Hastings. Miami Herald in readable form.

Gloria Henry, most famous as the mother on the “Dennis the Menace” TV series.

Paul Ritter.

Ritter was best known in the U.K. in recent years for playing the family patriarch in long-running Channel 4 comedy Friday Night Dinner, but was a recognizable face across numerous films, TV shows and stage plays, landing both Olivier and Tony nominations.
After his debut performance on famed police procedural drama The Bill in 1992, Ritter starred in films such as Son of Rambow, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Quantum of Solace. Ritter was recently seen in the Sky/HBO mini-series Chernobyl portraying Anatoly Dyatlov, the supervisor who was blamed for not following safety protocols leading to the nuclear disaster, and is set to appear in upcoming WWII drama Operation Mincemeat.

Arthur Kopit, playwright. Noted here because of his most famous work: “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad”. Among his many other works: the book for “Nine”.

Malcolm Cecil, synthesizer guy.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Politics, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 17, 2021.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

James Levine, “one of the world’s most influential and admired conductors”, according to the other paper of record.

Nicola Pagett, British actress. She was “Elizabeth Bellamy” on “Upstairs, Downstairs”.

Barbara Rickles, Don’s wife.

By many accounts, the Rickleses had one of the happiest marriages in show business. They socialized often with another enduring Hollywood couple, Bob and Ginny Newhart. Don Rickles died at 90 in 2017.
Barbara Rickles helped produce the Emmy-winning documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project” (2007) and the 2020 release “Don Rickles Live in Concert.” Don Rickles, in serious moments, would note that he was nearly 40 on his wedding day and had struggled for years to find someone.
“I advise any young person that gets married, really, work at it. If you work at it, it’s delightful,” he said in 1986, during one of his many appearances on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, whom he would tease endlessly about his multiple marriages.

Burning in Hell watch: Ronald DeFeo.

Mr. DeFeo was convicted in 1975 on six counts of second-degree murder after he confessed to using a rifle to shoot and kill his father, Ronald DeFeo Sr.; his mother, Louise; his sisters, Dawn and Allison; and his brothers, Mark and John Matthew.
The victims were found in their beds with gunshot wounds on Nov. 13, 1974. Mr. DeFeo, the oldest of the siblings, was 23 at the time.

The historical significance of this is: the DeFeo’s old house in Amityville was sold to another couple a year later.

Yeah, that house.

That family, the Lutzes, stayed there for just 28 days and claimed that the house was haunted by poltergeists who slammed windows, banged walls and wrenched doors off their hinges.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 9, 2021.

Tuesday, March 9th, 2021

I’ve been running behind on obits, so here’s a roundup.

Roger Mudd, CBS, NBC, and PBS anchorman and reporter. He was also a distant relative of Samuel Mudd (the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg).

Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth”.

Carla Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas. She was the last surviving child of Karl Wallenda.

By way of Lawrence, John “Bud” Cardos. IMDB describes him as a “B-movie Renaissance man“: he directed, acted, and did stunt work.

FotB RoadRich sent over some nice obits for Mike Collins. He sounds like a truly interesting guy: he worked for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) as technical editor and director of business operations. He was also a skilled photographer and amateur brewer.

Finally, Tony Hendra, “National Lampoon” and “Spy” guy, and “Ian Faith” in “This Is Spinal Tap”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 3, 2021.

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021

Margaret Maron, noted mystery writer. She actually passed away on February 23rd, but the paper of record didn’t get around to mentioning it until yesterday. The Rap Sheet has a nice tribute.

Bunny Wailer, of the Wailers.

Vernon Jordan.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Seriously, has everything gone completely nutso?

Thursday, February 25th, 2021

Headline:

Lady Gaga’s Dog Walker Shot and Critically Wounded, 2 French Bulldogs Stolen

I don’t want to seem like I’m making fun of the poor guy: he’s currently hospitalized in critical condition, and I hope he makes a full recovery.

Tara Bruno, founder of SNORT Rescue, a New Jersey-based organization that rescues bulldogs, pugs and Boston terriers, says French bulldogs are among the most stolen dog breeds because they’re very popular, are small and portable, and are expensive.
French bulldogs from reputable breeders cost between $3,000 and $5,000, she says, while dogs from puppy mills or overseas importers with designer coats in blue or merle can bring in about $10,000.

I’d like to think there would be some issues fencing bulldogs stolen at gunpoint. For example, I think most people who would pay money for a French bulldog probably want one with papers, which I’m sure the dog walker was not carrying around with him…

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Mammals, Music | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 325

Friday, February 19th, 2021

Just a random assortment today. Think of this as like a Whitman’s Sampler that you picked up at the grocery store after Valentine’s Day for 50% off. At least, you would have IF YOU HAD BEEN ABLE TO GET OUT TO THE GROCERY STORE THROUGH THE SNOW AND ICE IN AUSTIN.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway: The Pogues perform “London Calling”. Without Shane MacGowan, but with Joe Strummer.

This next one requires a bit of background: I’ve posted videos from “Captain Joe” before. If you’re the kind of person who sees videos of air traffic control conversations pop up in your feed, you’ve probably heard of “Kennedy Steve”. Steve was a controller at JFK (he retired a few years back) who became somewhat of a legend for his sharp (and often amusing) exchanges with pilots, ground crews, and others. Especially those who were keeping traffic from flowing in and out of JFK. Here’s a random example, which may not be the best: search “Kennedy Steve” on the ‘Tube.

ANYWAY: Captain Joe interviews Kennedy Steve. This is basically RoadRich bait.

“How to Poop in the Woods and NOT Die”. Do I really need to put a content warning on this? Well, maybe. Content warning.

I would like to note, for the hysterical record, that How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art is still in print (in a 4th edition, no less) and is readily available from Amazon (affiliate link).

Bonus: this is short, but I did get enough of a kick out of it that I wanted to share. Two of the stars of a minor 1960s TV science fiction series in a promo for Western Airlines.

The airline merged with Delta in 1987.

I think just one more. I don’t really consider this military history, but more of a music video. Clips of German Luftwaffe F-104 Starfighters…set to Peter Schilling.

Posted in Books, History, Music, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 12, 2021.

Friday, February 12th, 2021

I planned to post this last night, but we had multiple power outages through the day yesterday (as other people have noted, it is cold here: right now, my phone is calling for a low of 10 on Sunday and a low of 3 (yes, THREE) on Monday), the last one lasting until well into the evening.

So I’m playing catch-up today.

The NYT got around to publishing a respectful obit for James Gunn yesterday.

Chick Corea, jazz guy.

In 2006 he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the highest honor available to an American jazz musician.

In case you were wondering, I believe this is the complete list.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Leslie Robertson, structural engineer for the World Trade Center.

Mr. Robertson designed the structural systems of several notable skyscrapers, including the Shanghai World Financial Center, a 101-story tower with a vast trapezoidal opening at its peak, and I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, a cascade of interlocking pyramids. His projects included bridges, theaters and museums, and he helped install sculptures by Richard Serra, some weighing as much as 20 tons.
But the project that came to define his career was the World Trade Center. He was in his early 30s and something of an upstart when he and his partner, John Skilling, were chosen to design the structural system for what were to be the time, at 110 stories, the world’s tallest buildings. He was in his 70s when the towers were destroyed.

…

“The responsibility for the design ultimately rested with me,” Mr. Robertson told The New York Times Magazine after the towers were destroyed. He added: “I have to ask myself, Should I have made the project more stalwart? And in retrospect, the only answer you can come up with is, Yes, you should have.”
He conceded that he had not considered the possibility of fire raging through the buildings after a plane crash. But he also said that that was not part of the structural engineer’s job, which involves making sure that buildings resist forces like gravity and wind. “The fire safety systems in a building fall under the purview of the architect,” he said.
In an interview in 2009 in his Lower Manhattan office, Mr. Robertson wiped away tears as he recalled the victims of 9/11. He talked about the family members who had come to see him, hoping he could say something to help them with their grief. But he also said he was proud of the design of the twin towers.

…

According to Mr. Robertson, the buildings had been designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, but the planes flown into the towers were heavier 767s. And his calculations had been based on the initial impact of the plane; they did not take into account the possibility of what he called a “second event,” like a fire.
When the planes struck the towers, they sliced through the steel frames, but the buildings remained standing. Many engineers concluded that conventionally framed buildings would have collapsed soon after impact. The twin towers stood long enough to allow thousands of people to escape.
But the fire from the burning jet fuel raged on. The floor trusses lost strength as they heated up, and they began to sag. The floors eventually began pulling away from the exterior columns before the buildings fell. A total of 2,753 people were killed, including 343 firefighters.
Mr. Robertson said he received hate mail after 9/11. But on a flight to Toronto one day, an airline employee gave him an unexpected upgrade to first class. When he asked for an explanation, he recalled in the 2009 interview, the employee said, “I was in Tower 2, and I walked out.”

The infamous Larry Flynt. As my mother said, “I thought he was dead already.”

S. Clay Wilson, underground cartoonist. I went back and forth on whether I wanted to include Mr. Flynt and Mr. Wilson, but I decided that Mr. Flynt’s celebrity was too great to ignore. As for Mr. Wilson, you have to like a guy who says:

“I’m just a big kid,” Mr. Wilson told him. “I like toys, firearms and hats.”

Finally, also by way of Lawrence, British actor Harry Fielder, who was in pretty much every darn thing in Britain, passed away February 6th. Seriously, his IMDB entry has 279 credits as “actor” (though it looks like many of those were small roles).

Posted in Books, History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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