Mike Hagerty, character actor. Credits other than “Friends” include “Space Truckers”, two episodes of a spin-off of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, and “Speed 2: Cruise Control”.
Lawrence emailed an obit for Kevin Samuels, a YouTuber I’d never heard of but who was apparently followed avidly by some and hated by others.
Edited to add: better writeup from NBC News.
Domino, popular and beloved University of Texas cat. (Hattip: FotB RoadRich.)
By way of President Dawg, a long thread on “Convoy” (the song and the movie) and the ’70s trucker/CB culture:
I was in hysterics last night while Patrick was trying to explain to me the ‘trucking enthusiasm of the late 70s’ https://t.co/q4wXiSuIyQ
— Ricardo Montalbán’s remote control piano (@pipandbaby) May 4, 2022
Includes bonus “Phantom 309”, MST3K, and “B.J. and the Bear” references.
I’m a little old for this, but:
30 THINGS YOU SHOULD START DOING BEFORE YOU TURN 30
1/ pic.twitter.com/i9hkdkVIj2— Pee Wee Herman Melville (@PeeMelville) May 6, 2022
I was reading an article on Damn Interesting the other night, and it set me on a wiki wander.
1. The Damon Runyon Cancer Fund still exists, but it is now known as the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. And it has a four star Charity Navigator rating.
2. You can buy Broadway tickets through the foundation.
I like the way they put that: “an infringement of the law, but widely approved”. (Also: Eddie Rickenbacker for the win.)
4. Jackie Chan’s “Miracles” is an adaptation of “Lady for a Day” and “Pocketful of Miracles” (both directed by Frank Capra), which in turn were based on Runyon’s story “Madame La Gimp”. According to Wikipedia, Chan added “several of his trademark stunt sequences”.
5. I don’t remember the 1980 remake of “Little Miss Marker”, and if I did, it probably would have made me gag when it came out. But: Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis, Julie Andrews, and Bob Newhart?
6. We should probably watch both “A Slight Case of Murder” (Edward G. Robinson!) and “Stop, You’re Killing Me” (the remake with Broderick Crawford and Margaret Dumont).
David Walden. There may be some folks out there for whom that rings a bell. For the rest of the crowd, he was one of the pioneers of the early Internet.
In 1969, Mr. Walden was part of a small team of talented young engineers whose mission was to build the Interface Message Processor. Its function was to switch data among computers linked to the nascent Arpanet, the precursor to the internet. The first I.M.P. was installed that year at the University of California, Los Angeles. The I.M.P.s would be crucial to the internet until the Arpanet was decommissioned in 1989.
Mr. Walden was the first computer programmer to work with the team. “The I.M.P. guys,” as they came to call themselves, developed the computer in nine frenetic months under a contract secured by Bolt Beranek and Newman (now Raytheon BBN), a technology company in Cambridge, Mass.
The I.M.P.s served as translators between mainframe computers at different locations and the network itself. Each I.M.P. translated what came over the network into the particular language of that location’s main computer. The translation work of the I.M.P. evolved into today’s network routers.
The work of Mr. Walden and his colleagues was unprecedented. “They had no models to draw on,” said Marc Weber, a curatorial director at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “They were creating out of whole cloth a new class of machine.”
He added, “They took a very new idea at the time and turned it into a living, breathing, working machine with its own software and protocols that became an essential component of the network that grew to connect all of us.”
Noted: the NYT obit is by Katie Hafner. Her book with Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (affiliate link) covers this and lots of other early Internet history, and I enthusiastically recommend it.
Lawrence sent over an obit for Kailia Posey, who was on “Toddlers & Tiaras” as a child. She was 16 years old, and according to her family, died by suicide.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
1. The Bunk lies down on Broadway.
Wendell Pierce is ready for another run as Willy Loman.
The American actor, best known for his work in “The Wire,” first took on the titanic title role in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2019, and even then he hungered to bring the performance to New York.
Rod Dreher and his family saw the London production, and he raved about it. This might actually be enough to get me to go to NYC. (Also, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew the Colossus of Roads were talking about Peter Luger on Saturday, and I’d like to take a shot at that.)
2.
NEWS: A deal to publish Harlan Ellison's THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, as well as its predecessors, DANGEROUS VISIONS and AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS has been struck with Blackstone Publishers via the Janklow & Nesbit Agency, and announced at the London Book Fair, slated for '23.
— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) May 2, 2022
(The Last Dangerous Visions explained, for those of my readers who are not SF fans.)
3. There’s a movie tentatively scheduled for February 2023. It sounds like trash, but fun trash.
That’s right, a movie inspired by the true story of Cocaine Bear. How can you not be entertained?
I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.
Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.
Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.
…
He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”
Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.
He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.
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It was a busy weekend, so I’m playing catch-up on a lot of stuff here.
For the record: Naomi Judd. THR.
Klaus Schulze, musician.
Jacques Perrin, French actor. Credits include “Z”, “Cinema Paradiso”, and “The Young Girls of Rochefort”.
Neal Adams, comics guy.
During his Batman run, Adams and writer Dennis O’Neil brought a revolutionary change to the hero and the comics, delivering realism, kineticism and a sense of menace to their storytelling in the wake of the campy Adam West-starring ’60s ABC series and years of the hero being aimed at kiddie readers.
He created new villains for the rogue’s gallery — the Man-Bat and Ra’s al Ghul as well as the latter’s daughter, Talia, who became Batman’s lover. The father and daughter, played by Liam Neeson and Marion Cotillard, were key characters in the trilogy of Batman movies directed by Christopher Nolan.
Joanna Barnes. Beyond “Parent Trap” and “Auntie Mame”, she had a fair number of 70s TV credits, including “The Name of the Game”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “McCloud” (and, interestingly, “Cool Million”, a short-lived show in the “Mystery Movie” wheel), “Quincy M.E.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Fear I to Fall“, season 2, episode 12.)
Jossara Jinaro. Credits other than “ER” include “Doctor Who: Alternate Empire” and “The Devil’s Rejects”.
Rachelle Zylberberg, aka “Régine“, disco entrepreneur. At one point, she supposedly owned 23 clubs. (“Some of her clubs, she explained, were franchises owned by local entrepreneurs who paid up to $500,000 and gave her cuts of the action to use her name.”)
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Saluting Bastille Day in New York, the patriots included Gov. Hugh L. Carey, Ethel Kennedy, Margaux Hemingway, Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner (at the time, the chairman of the United States Bicentennial Commission), and Senator George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.
“If anyone had second thoughts about celebrating an event that theoretically ended the privileged class, in a room some 40 times as crowded as the Bastille dungeon on that fateful day, no one made them audible,” The New York Times reported. “To be fair, it was somewhat difficult to make anything other than isolated words audible.”
Kathy Boudin is burning in Hell. Peter Paige, Edward J. O’Grady, and Waverly L. Brown were unavailable for comment.
Because we haven’t had any in a minute.
I had clear broth chowder a couple of times when I was in RI, and I like it. Now that Mr. Winslow has brought up the subject, I’m halfway tempted to whip up a batch of my own, since you can’t get it around these parts. (I’m okay with a good white broth chowder.)
What I really miss is stuffies.
And I hope you guys are enjoying those $10 lobster rolls: my favorite local Connecticut roll is $22.
(I bet Winslow would probably hate me, but I’m a Connecticut guy. Mayonnaise is vile, and that’s pretty much what the Maine roll is: you’re paying $10 for flavored mayo.)
(I can’t figure out if McDonald’s in New England still sell lobster rolls. There are a lot of references to McD’s lobster rolls on the Internet, but they’re all several years old.)
Yeah…might have to pick up a copy of that.
Edited to add: meant to add a link, for reference: Rhode Island Clear Broth Clam Chowder.
Harold Livingston, screenwriter. It doesn’t seem like he was terribly prolific (21 writing credits in IMDB) but there’s some gold.
His biggest credit seems to be the screenplay for the first movie based on a minor SF TV show from the 1960s. Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, nine episodes of “Mission: Impossible”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”, “The Name of the Game”, “Banacek”, “Archer” (the 1975 “Archer”), “Barbary Coast”…
…and “Mannix”. (“The Girl from Nowhere“, season 7, episode 19. “A Small Favor for an Old Friend“, season 8, episode 7, one of the “old Army buddy” episodes.)
NYT obit for Cynthia Albritton.
Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, noted Texas novelist who wrote about the Rio Grande Valley.
Kenneth Tsang, Hong Kong actor. Credits include “A Better Tomorrow”, “Die Another Day”, and “The Replacement Killers”.
Oh, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Don’t ever change.
…
Detailing an ongoing criminal probe of the leak, Villanueva displayed a poster with large photographs of Tchekmedyian, his political rival Eli Vera and sheriff’s Inspector General Max Huntsman with arrows pointing from the two men to the reporter.
“The three individuals that we want to know a lot about,” Villanueva said. “These three people have some important questions to answer.”
Villanueva exhibited a list of possible felonies under investigation, including conspiracy, burglary and unauthorized use of a database. When pressed by reporters on whether he was investigating Tchekmedyian specifically, the sheriff replied, “All parties to the act are subjects of the investigation.”
…
At 6:46 p.m., Villanueva issued a statement reacting to what he called an “incredible frenzy of misinformation being circulated.”
“I must clarify at no time today did I state an L.A. Times reporter was a suspect in a criminal investigation,” he said. “We have no interest in pursuing, nor are we pursuing, criminal charges against any reporters.”
All of this is over a video that got leaked, showing a deputy kneeling on an inmate’s head for three minutes.
For the historical record: Orrin Hatch.
Jim Hartz, NBC news guy and former “Today” host.
Sarah Shulze. She was 21 years old and ran track for the University of Wisconsin.
According to her family, her death was a suicide.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
Laura Hales. I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor had I heard of Ms. Hales previously. However, I have a lot of respect for people who explore the difficult parts of their religion.
Ms. Hales was a writer and podcaster.
The Haleses maintained a website, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, devoted to examining that contentious aspect of the history of the church and its 19th-century founder. In 2015 they co-wrote a book on the subject, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding.” In 2016 Ms. Hales compiled and edited “A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS History and Doctrine,” a book of essays by church scholars whose chapters include “Race, the Priesthood and Temples,” “Joseph Smith’s Practice of Plural Marriage” and “Homosexuality and the Gospel.”
But Ms. Hales found an even bigger audience when, in 2017, she created the podcast “Latter-day Saint Perspectives,” which she recorded, edited and hosted. In 130 episodes, before she closed it out last year, the podcast brought on experts to talk about aspects of church history and doctrine.
Some of the episodes were light, like one on Joseph Smith’s dog. But most took a serious look at topics that might be confusing or troubling to church members. “Homosexuality and the Gospel,” “The L.D.S. Church and the Sugar Industry” and “A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism” were among the episode titles.
The church has long been criticized by outsiders and former members for aspects of its history, doctrine and culture. But Ms. Hales, a lifelong church member, approached the subjects from “a faithful but not necessarily devotional perspective,” as she put it in the podcast’s final episode, last May.
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Ms. Hales took up many topics in her writing and on her podcast, but she dealt with polygamy so often that in 2015 she wrote an essay for The Millennial Star, a blog maintained by church members, entitled “Why I Write About Polygamy.” In the essay, she mentioned that she and her husband had given a number of presentations on the subject.
“The most unanticipated question I have fielded in these forums is why I feel a need to defend polygamy,” she wrote. “Perhaps it is because I don’t see my work as a defense of polygamy so much as an effort to help more people better understand the history of polygamy.”
She was only 54. Pancreatic cancer got her.
Over at his place, Murray Newman has put up a really nice obit for his friend and mentor Gil Schultz. I encourage you to click over and read it.
David Carter, chief of police for the University of Texas Police Department. Before that, he was with APD for 28 years, reaching the rank of chief of staff.
Mikhail Vasenkov, Commie.
When they were arrested, Mr. Vasenkov and his wife, Vicky Pelaez, a journalist, had been living undercover in a Soviet-owned two-story brick and stucco house in suburban Yonkers, N.Y., since immigrating from her native Peru in 1985.
They and eight others, part of a network of so-called illegals, were rounded up in a multiyear F.B.I. investigation, called Operation Ghost Stories, and pleaded guilty to failing to register as agents of a foreign government. They were then deported, flown to Europe on July 9, 2010, and swapped for four Russians who had been imprisoned in Moscow on charges of spying for the United States and Britain.
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When the spies were rounded up, the F.B.I. said that while “their intent from the start was serious, well-funded by the S.V.R.” — the Soviet intelligence service — “and far-ranging,” they “never got their hands on any classified documents.”
Whether for the benefit of eavesdroppers or because he was getting paid regardless, Mr. Vasenkov was recorded by federal agents telling his wife matter-of-factly that his Soviet handlers “say my information is of no value,” adding, “If they don’t like what I tell them, too bad.”
Cynthia Albritton. She was better known as “Plaster Caster”, and that’s all I’m going to say. Those of you unfamiliar with the whole “plaster caster” thing can click over to the obit for the details.
Daryle Lamonica, quarterback for the Oakland Raiders.
He started out playing for the Buffalo Bills in the AFL, behind Jack Kemp. But he couldn’t replace Kemp as the starter, and the Bills traded him to Oakland, where he was pretty successful.
He led the 1967 Raiders to a 13-1 regular-season record and the A.F.L. championship, throwing for 30 touchdowns and 3,228 yards. He passed for two touchdowns in the Super Bowl, which the Raiders lost to the Packers, 33-14.
Lamonica was part of an offense that emphasized precise timing between the quarterback and a receiver running his route. It was designed to create open space in the defense’s secondary, making it especially vulnerable to deep passing plays.
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Lamonica was selected for the Pro Bowl once with the Bills and four times with the Raiders.
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Worth noting, because that’s just the kind of hairball I am:
(Previously.)
Guy Lafleur, of the Montreal Canadiens. I’m not a huge hockey fan, but even I’ve heard of Guy Lafleur.
The winger affectionately known as “The Flower” and “The Blonde Demon” played 14 seasons with Montreal (1971-85) and was a cornerstone of five Stanley Cup-winning teams, including in 1977, when he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. Lafleur was electric on the ice, becoming the first player in league history to produce six consecutive seasons with 50-plus goals and 100-plus points (1974-80).
During the height of his career in the 1970s, Lafleur was a three-time Art Ross Trophy winner as the NHL’s points leader, a two-time Hart Trophy winner as league MVP and a three-time winner of the Lester B. Pearson Award (now known as the Ted Lindsay) as most outstanding player according to the NHL Players’ Association.