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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1545 on: March 04, 2017, 01:21:04 PM »
tdotter I know what it is to lose a parent. In that spirit, I offer you and your family my deepest condolences.
ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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bignatslover

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1546 on: March 05, 2017, 07:56:53 AM »
Hi tdotter
Hope all is going well with all of the inevitable things you have to do to take care of a family member's passing.
My dad is in his 80s so I definitely think about it a lot myself.


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Quadhouse

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1547 on: March 05, 2017, 02:32:54 PM »
My Dad.

I can't imagine your pain.  I didn't meet my father until I was 14, but, for what its worth, you have my condolences.
“HEY, HOLD UP!” Chaka said.  She turned to Jade, “Did you just say that there are monsters in the sewers?”

Jade looked up at her sempai and smiled, “I’m sorry, but as a Junior Waste Management Technician, I am not authorized to discuss this issue.”

For a long time, the whole group stared at the little girl in horror as she licked the spoon.

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solvegas

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1548 on: March 06, 2017, 11:36:08 PM »
Robert Osborne, host of TCM ( Turner Classic Movies ) died today at age 84. Surprised no one mentioned it before. The man was a class act all the way. He started in Hollywood as an actor but was counseled by Hollywood legend Lucille Ball that " there are too many actors and not enough people reporting about the industry " so he took it to heart and acquired a encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood movie films, television and all the ancillary that comes with them. He got his own Hollywood Walk of Fame star back in 2006. Shame he had to go.  :'(

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1549 on: March 07, 2017, 10:29:29 PM »
Robert Osborne, host of TCM ( Turner Classic Movies ) died today at age 84. Surprised no one mentioned it before....

You beat me to it!

I never saw him, but being a fan of "horror hosts", I had the utmost respect for him. He was immensely knowledgeable about movies and the industry, but never came across as being smug or pretentious.
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1550 on: March 17, 2017, 10:24:48 PM »
Nobel Laureate (1992) DEREK WALCOTT (1930-2017):

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

"In the Village" (2010)
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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solvegas

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1551 on: March 18, 2017, 05:52:39 PM »
Legendary musician and original Rock and Roller Charles Edward Anderson Berry Sr, AKA Chuck Berry has died at the age of 90 at his home in St Charles County in Missouri. Biggest hit he had was " Johnny  B. Goode " way back in 1954 before I was born in 1956.  :'(

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gonZo

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1552 on: March 19, 2017, 07:09:37 PM »
Master illustrator and storyteller Bernie Wrightson, co-creator of Swamp Thing, dead at 68

Quote
After a long battle with brain cancer, legendary artist Bernie Wrightson has passed away.

Bernie “Berni” Wrightson (born October 27, 1948, Baltimore, Maryland, USA) was an American artist known for his horror illustrations and comic books. He received training in art from reading comics, particularly those of EC, as well as through a correspondence course from the Famous Artists School. In 1966, Wrightson began working for The Baltimore Sun newspaper as an illustrator. The following year, after meeting artist Frank Frazetta at a comic-book convention in New York City, he was inspired to produce his own stories. In 1968, he showed copies of his sequential art to DC Comics editor Dick Giordano and was given a freelance assignment. Wrightson began spelling his name “Berni” in his professional work to distinguish himself from an Olympic diver named Bernie Wrightson, but later restored the final E to his name.

His first professional comic work appeared in House of Mystery #179 in 1968. He continued to work on a variety of mystery and anthology titles for both DC and its principal rival, Marvel Comics. In 1971, with writer Len Wein, Wrightson co-created the muck creature Swamp Thing for DC. He also co-created Destiny, later to become famous in the work of Neil Gaiman. By 1974 he had left DC to work at Warren Publishing who were publishing black-and-white horror-comics magazines. There he produced a series of original work as well as adaptations of stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. In 1975, Wrightson joined with fellow artists Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, and Barry Windsor-Smith to form “The Studio,” a shared loft in Manhattan where the group would pursue creative products outside the constraints of comic book commercialism. Though he continued to produce sequential art, Wrightson at this time began producing artwork for numerous posters, prints, calendars, and coloring books.

Wrightson spent seven years drawing approximately 50 detailed pen-and-ink illustrations to accompany an edition of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, which the artist considers among his most personal work. Wrightson drew the poster for the Stephen King-penned horror film Creepshow, as well as illustrating the comic book adaptation of the film. This led to several other collaborations with King, including illustrations for the novella “Cycle of the Werewolf,” the restored edition of King’s apocalyptic horror epic, “The Stand,” and art for the hardcover editions of “From a Buick 8” and “Dark Tower V.” Wrightson has contributed album covers for a number of bands, including Meat Loaf. The “Captain Sternn” segment of the animated film Heavy Metal is based on the character created by Wrightson for his award-winning short comic series of the same name.

Characters he worked on included Spiderman, Batman and The Punisher, and he provided painted covers for the DC comics Nevermore and Toe Tags, among many others. Recent works include Frankenstein Alive Alive, Dead She Said , the Ghoul and Doc Macabre (IDW Publishing) all co-created with esteemed horror author Steve Niles, and several print/poster/sketchbooks series produced by Nakatomi.

As a conceptual artist, Bernie worked on many movies, particularly in the horror genre: well-known films include Ghostbusters, The Faculty, Galaxy Quest, Spiderman, and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, and Frank Darabont’s Stephen King film The Mist.

Bernie lived in Austin, Texas with his wife Liz and two corgis – Mortimer and Maximillian. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, John and Jeffrey, one stepson, Thomas Adamson, and countless friends and fans. A celebration of his life is planned for later this year.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2017, 07:19:48 PM by gonZo »

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1553 on: March 20, 2017, 06:45:01 PM »
(A pox on you, gonZo! I had this written at work, where I obviously couldn't get to this Forum to post it.... (grin) )
(I'll remove the one I posted. Actual writing beats cut-and-paste, especially in a Breslin obit. –gonZo)

JIMMY BRESLIN (1928-2017):

James Earle Breslin was born in Richmond Hills, Queens, on Oct. 17, 1928 to James Breslin Sr. and his wife Frances. His alcoholic father abandoned the family when he was 6.

A college dropout, Breslin got his first newspaper job as a copy boy at the Long Island Press in 1948, and then became a sportswriter at the Journal-American.

In 1963, he was working for the Herald Tribune when he was sent to cover JFK's funeral. Instead of being one of the multitude reporting on the actual funeral, Breslin found someone unusual to interview:

Quote
"Pollard was in the middle of eating [breakfast] when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. 'Polly, could you please be here by eleven o’clock this morning?' Kawalchik asked. 'I guess you know what it’s for.' Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy."

Breslin was the archetypical beat reporter. Cigar smoking, whiskey **94**, pounding typewriters so hard he'd occasionally break them. He moved on to the NY Daily News, where by the 1970's his reporting had made him sufficiently well-known in NYC to get him an unusual fan:

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The letter was from the person who calls himself "Son of Sam." He prowls the night streets of New York neighborhoods and shoots at young girls and sometimes their boy friends too, and he has killed five and wounded four. He sneaks up on victims with a .44-caliber pistol. Most of the young women had shoulder-length brown hair.

One of the victims was Donna Lauria, who was 18 last year when the killer shot her as she sat in a car with her girl friend outside the Laurias’ apartment house on Buhre Ave. in the Bronx. Donna Lauria was the only victim mentioned by the killer in this letter, which was sent to me at my newspaper in New York, The Daily News. So yesterday, I took the letter up to the fourth-floor apartment of Donna Lauria’s parents and I sat over coffee and read the letter again and talked to the Laurias about it....

J.B., I’m just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous .44 killings. I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and find it quite informative.


In December 1980, he banged away at his typewriter to beat the deadline for a piece on a killing outside an apartment building on Central Park West:

Quote
That summer in Breezy Point, when he was 18 and out of Madison High in Brooklyn, there was the Beatles on the radio at the beach through the hot days and on the jukebox through the nights in the Sugar Bowl and Kennedys. He was young and he let his hair grow and there were girls and it was the important part of life.

Last year, Tony Palma even went to see Beatlemania.

And now, last night, a 34-year-old man, he sat in a patrol car at 82nd St. and Columbus Ave. and the call came over the radio: “Man shot, 1 West 72 St.."

He cultivated connections with various shady but colorful characters in New York City. Klein the Lawyer, Marvin the Torch, Shelly the Bail Bondsman, Un Occhio the mob boss.... These contacts helped him break a multi-million dollar scandal at the Parking Violations Bureau in 1986. That story was one of many that got him a Pulitzer Prize that year - "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens.", according to the citation.

"He had a big ego, which you have to have if you think people should be interested in what you have to say, but he still had a big heart," former Newsday editor John Mancini said. "It allowed him to tell the biggest stories from the smallest details of people’s lives."

"He remained devoted to telling what he saw as the truth," said Michael Daly, also a former Daily News columnist. "He did not write to a particular audience. He did not pander or write to curry favor."

"Long before 9/11 showed America how great the average New Yorker was, Breslin was doing it on the pages of New York’s newspapers every day," Sen. Charles Schumer said on Twitter.

Although Breslin stopped producing a regular column years ago, his influence remained.

Glenn Thrush, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and former Newsday reporter, tweeted: "Not a day I walk into this White House without thinking ‘How the hell would Jimmy deal with these guys?’ "

Breslin, basking in the glow of his recent Pulitzer Prize:
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 07:50:59 PM by gonZo »
rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1554 on: March 21, 2017, 09:46:06 PM »

Glenn Thrush, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and former Newsday reporter, tweeted: "Not a day I walk into this White House without thinking ‘How the hell would Jimmy deal with these guys?’ "


As it turns out, we have a good idea of what Breslin thought of these guys.

From "The Art of the Trump: Call It Corum's Law", by Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, June 7, 1990:
Quote

Suddenly, we have all these prudent, responsible bankers, loan papers crackling in their frightened hands, chasing madly after Donald Trump for money. It seems like great sport, but I must tell you that I believe this to be temporary and that Trump, no matter what kind of a crash he experiences now, will come back as sure as you are reading this. I now will tell you why.

Trump survives by Corum's Law. This is a famous, well-tested theory and is named after Bill Corum, who once wrote sports for the Hearst papers when they were in New York..."Because, gentlemen, this is the rule. A sucker has to get screwed." Corum ran the Kentucky Derby on this premise for years, and the game was good for all of Louisville. No sucker ever wept.

Today, Corum's Law runs all of Donald Trump's situation. But instead of horseplayers, the suckers who must get screwed are a combination of news reporters and financial people. It is all quite simple. Donald Trump handles these nitwit reporters with a new and most disgraceful form of bribery, about which I will tell you. He uses the reporters to create a razzle dazzle: there are five stories in the newspapers in the morning papers leading into 11 minutes of television at night. The financial people, who lead such dreary lives, believe what they read and see on television. Trump is larger than life. No, not Trump. Don't use that name. It's Donald! He cannot lose. The financial geniuses can't wait to rush into the glamour and lights. They want to touch Trump's arm. "Here, I'm from Prudential, the rock of Gibraltar. Take our $ 75 million to build another crap game. Can I ride on your boat?"...

But when I started to think about it, I immediately realized I was wrong. Things were even worse. These reporters were doing it for nothing! The scandal in journalism in our time is that ethics have disintegrated to the point where Donald Trump took over news reporters in this city with the art of the return phone call.

Trump bought reporters, from morning paper to nightly news, with two minutes of purring over the phone...

But all involved now, particularly the worried bankers, should know that Corum's Law remains. Trump will call and announce his rise. The suckers will write about a heroic indomitable spirit. Redemption makes an even better tale. So many bankers will grab his arm the sleeve will rip. All Trump has to do is stick to the rules on which he was raised by his father in the County of Queens:

Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it's your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.

The trouble with Trump's father was that he was a totally naive man. He had no idea that you could buy the whole news reporting business in New York City with a return phone call.


ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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TheZookie007

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1555 on: March 22, 2017, 03:04:25 AM »
Chuck Barris, the wacky host of The Gong Show, died Tuesday.

His publicist confirmed he passed away from natural causes at his home in Palisades, New York, at the age of 87.

Barris was the creator of The Gong Show and two other popular TV game shows, The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game.

Barris claimed in his autobiography that his game show antics had been a cover for his work as a CIA operative, working as an assassin during the 1960s and '70s. The CIA denied his story. However, the book Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind was turned into a movie starring Sam Rockwell and directed by George Clooney, released in 2002.

In addition to creating game shows, Barris also wrote songs, his most famous being "Palisades Park" in 1962.

Born in Philadelphia in 1929, he joined NBC in New York as a page and then moved to ABC to become a backstage staffer at American Bandstand.

He moved with the media company to Los Angeles where he was tasked with overseeing daytime game shows.

He created The Dating Game that debuted in the 1965-66 season followed by The Newlywed Game in the summer of 1966.

He formed the public company Chuck Barris Productions in 1968 and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, sold his shares in the firm to producer Burt Sugarman in a 1986 deal that valued the company at the time at about $86 million.

His Gong Show aired on NBC and in syndication from 1976 and 1980 and offered amateurs the opportunity to show off their talents to a three-judge panel.

He orchestrated laughs by mixing good performers in with terrible ones.

He explained: 'I came back (from scouting contestants) and said, 'Let's change the show, have all bad acts and one or two good ones, and people can make a judgment,'' he said in a 2010 interview with The Archive of American Television.

After the first season, he was asked to front the show himself and became famous for his attire of tuxedo and floppy hat and his goofy antics.

Barris' life was touched by personal tragedy when his daughter died in 1998 at age 36 from a drugs and alcohol overdose.

He is survived by his wife of 16 years, Mary Clagett.

ACB, BK, CT, NG, SA: FU. FUATH. 100x.

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1556 on: March 23, 2017, 07:42:06 PM »
Looking back on The Gong Show, one can easily put it in the same group as vaudeville, the talent shows of early TV, and perhaps even burlesque comics.

There was no shaming involved (I'm looking at you, Simon Cowell.....); every act was guaranteed forty-five seconds before a judge could even pick up the mallet. And Barris, with his goofy hats and corny jokes, made the contestants feel that no matter how bad they were, they couldn't be sillier than he was.

rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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Hiram

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1557 on: March 24, 2017, 02:31:15 AM »
PC Keith Palmer.

Killed in the line of duty.
Lipsmacking, thirst quenching, ace tasting, motivating, good buzzing, cool talking, high walking, fast living, ever giving, cool fizzing... #BOOBs

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rtpoe

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1558 on: April 06, 2017, 10:13:19 PM »
DON RICKLES (1926-2017)

Donald Jay Rickles was born on May 8, 1926, in New York and raised in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. Following graduation from Newtown High School, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, then studied acting and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

At age 32, Rickles landed a small part in Robert Wise’s submarine drama Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), starring Clark Gable. Two years later, he was cast in The Rat Race with Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds. A few other film and TV roles would follow (check him out in 1963's X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), but he found that acting jobs were few and far between for a short, bald guy.

He tried a stand-up comedy routine, but nothing clicked until he found his best laughs came when he ridiculed hecklers. His career then skyrocketed after he insulted the hot-tempered Frank Sinatra, who normally did not take kindly to such treatment. When Sinatra walked into a Miami Beach club in 1957 where Rickles was performing, the comedian greeted him with "Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody."

Frank laughed as much as everyone else, and backed Rickles throughout his career. In 1985, when Sinatra was asked to perform at Ronald Reagan’s second Inaugural Ball, he insisted that Rickles accompany him for a comedy routine. Rickles, naturally, did not spare the president (“Am I going too fast for you, Ronnie?” he asked) and considered that performance among the highlights of his career.

All the barbs belied his genuinely warm and caring nature. He would never have lasted as long as he did if his targets didn't know that it was all an act.

"He was called 'The Merchant of Venom,' but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known." - Bob and Ginnie Newhart

"We became friends over the years and I had the honor of being roasted by him more than once - sometimes when I didn’t expect it. He just started showing up at places and insulting me. Experiencing Don, and tuning into his mind, I witnessed the evolution of his comedy. It was like listening to a great jazz musician wail. Nobody else did what he did. He made comedy into an art form. And like all geniuses, comic or otherwise, he’s irreplaceable. He was much loved. I’m really missing this man." - Martin Scorsese, who directed Rickles in the 1995 movie Casino

"90 years with Don Rickles weren't enough. One of the sweetest and most lovely people I had the pleasure of knowing. We miss you already." - Jimmy Kimmel

"Don once begged me for a couple of bucks then told me to twist myself into a pretzel. Ego slayer! Comic Everest! Spank you, Mr Rickles. ;^) " - Jim Carrey

"Don Rickles is funnier right now in death than most comics are in life." - Chris Rock

"He never was Politically Correct and he never apologized for it." - Gilbert Gottfried

"In lieu of flowers, Don Rickles' family has requested that people drop their pants and fire a rocket." - Patton Oswalt

"Sweetest, funniest, legend and mensch. Came to a party at my house gave me a dollar and told me to get a nicer place." - Craig Ferguson

"As I was standing nearby, Don Rickles once whispered in my wife's ear, "What are you doing with a loser like him?" I was honored." - Kevin Nealon

"A packed room at Caesar's Palace Don introduced me like this, "A fabulous woman, an Oscar, Emmy winner and former h00ker..." so sad he's gone." - Helen Hunt

rtpoe

The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell.
-  Donald Culross Peattie

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solvegas

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Re: The R.I.P. Thread
« Reply #1559 on: April 06, 2017, 11:04:00 PM »
Rickles was at his best when he was part of the Dean Martin **29** roasts back in the 70's. Pure comedy gold. He spared no one. I remember he and Foster Brooks did a tandem insult marathon to Frank Sinatra which to this day just makes me laugh. I'm afraid today's audiences are now too politically correct to get the humor. Hell of a shame.  :'(