Apparently Andrew Gold has died. Singer songwriter best known for 'Lonely Boy' and "Thank You for Being a Friend".

Jazz pianist Ray Bryant passed away this past Thursday at the age of 79. He was a popular hard bop accompanist in the 1950's, playing on recordings by Lee Morgan & Benny Golson, among others.

Armand "Papa Joe" Chevalier, a longtime Las Vegas resident who built a wide following with his local and syndicated sports talk radio show, died Friday from complications of a stroke at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas. He was 62.

Chevalier, popular for expressing views that largely represented the average sports fan, suffered a stroke in late March that resulted in paralysis to his right side. His speech and cognitive processes were not affected.

"You know how people say I've fallen and I can't get up? Well, I've fallen and I can't get up," Chevalier said April 7 at Desert Springs Hospital.

Although he was in good spirits then, family members said Chevalier grew despondent over his situation and the long rehabilitation ahead.

"I don't know if he had given up or what," said Art Chevalier, Joe's brother. "He just wasn't eating enough, wasn't sleeping enough to keep going after it."

Former Las Vegas sportscaster Ron Futrell worked alongside Chevalier at Sports Fan Radio Network, which broadcast from 1996 to 2001 in Las Vegas, and considered Chevalier a close friend.

"What I really liked about him was that his view was the fan's view, and he took great pride in that," Futrell said.

"When I think of Las Vegas sports talk radio, I think of Joe and Lee Pete. They were the legends, and within the last two years, we have lost them both."

Chevalier was born and raised in Pittsburgh but made his name in Las Vegas. He eventually moved to Chicago, where "The Papa Joe Show" was nationally syndicated by the Sporting News Radio Network until 2005.

Before returning to Las Vegas, Chevalier became known for "Bite Me Wednesday," in which he would encourage fans to call in and air grievances, and his show was featured in "Sports Talk: A Journey Inside the World of Sports Talk Radio," a 2001 book by Alan Eisenstock about the genre's growing popularity.

Art Chevalier said his brother was the same person off the air as on it, which resonated with his fans and friends.

"He didn't mince words, and that's why people loved him," Art Chevalier said. "You might not agree with him, but you knew where he stood."

Joe Chevalier was single and lived alone in Las Vegas. Plans for a service or memorial are pending.

Lilian Jackson Braun, whom The New York Times labeled “the new detective of the year” after the debut of her first "The Cat Who ..." novel in 1966, died Saturday at the Hospice House of the Carolina Foothills in Landrum, S.C. She was 97.

Braun, a Tryon resident for 23 years, wrote three critically acclaimed novels from 1966 to 1968: "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards," "The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern" and "The Cat Who Turned On and Off."

There was an 18-year hiatus between her third and fourth books.

Braun said she stopped writing the mysteries because the genre had begun to include more sex and violence. Also, she had a full-time job with the Detroit Free Press that she found satisfying.

She resumed the series, with the encouragement of her husband, Earl Bettinger, after her retirement from the newspaper in 1984.

Berkley Publishing Group reintroduced Braun to the public with the publication of the fourth in the series, "The Cat Who Saw Red" in 1986. Within two years, Berkeley released four new novels and reprinted the three mysteries from the sixties. G.P. Putnam's Sons has since published 21 "The Cat Who" novels, one each year through 2007.

Braun's death was announced by her husband of 33 years, Earl Bettinger, to whom the author always referred in her book dedications as “The Husband Who.”

Braun died of natural causes. No services are planned.

The Cat Who novels are considered light, humorous mysteries and have been translated into 16 languages, distributed worldwide, and sold in the millions. Her books were standards on the New York Times best seller list. Beginning in 1990, her books reached the prestigious list for 20 consecutive years.

Lilian Jackson Braun Bettinger was born on June 20, 1913 in Willimansette, Chicopee Falls, Mass. Her father, Charles Jackson, was an inventor and industrial manufacturing troubleshooter. Her mother, Clara Ward Jackson, was a homemaker. Her father's work took them to Rhode Island, Brooklyn NY and to Detroit MI. Ms. Braun lived in Michigan until retiring to Tryon, N.C.

In 2005 The Polk County Public Library in Columbus, NC held a Tribute to Lilian Jackson Braun for her lifetime achievement and community involvement. It was an evening of song, limericks, readings and tributes. Ms. Braun served as the honorary writer in residence for the library as well as honorary chairperson of the 2005 library card sign-up campaign, where she created the tag line, “A library card is the beginning of a lifelong adventure”.

Wally Boag & Betty Taylor, longtime fixtures in Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Review, have both died this week:

Producer, writer and director Leonard Stern, who created with Jackie Gleason the iconic TV series "The Honeymooners" as well as almost two dozen other series and 12 films and was also a leader of the Producers Guild of America, died Tuesday, June 7, in Los Angeles. He was 88.
Stern, who also partnered with Roger Price and Larry Sloan in the Price/Stern/Sloan literary publishing company, authored several books, including "Dear Attila the Hun" and "A Martian Wouldn't Say That!" Jay Leno has regularly dipped into the latter, a collection of memos from TV executives that they wish they hadn't written, on "The Tonight Show." The firm was launched with the popular Mad Libs, the word game created by Stern and Price and published since 1958.

Stern quickly grew to become one of the busiest creative forces in television, writing a season of "The Phil Silvers Show" (aka "Sergeant Bilko") and drawing a shared Emmy in the process, followed by 150 episodes as head writer of "The Steve Allen Show," for which he was also Emmy nommed. He also produced "Get Smart" for five years, earning an Emmy nomination for best comedy series and winning one, together with Buck Henry, for comedy writing.

Stern created "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster"; "He and She," drawing another shared Emmy nom; and "The Governor and J.J."

But he didn't always work in comedy, spending time in the detective genre as well. Stern wrote, directed and produced seven years of NBC's "McMillan and Wife," starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, and also worked on the network's "The Snoop Sisters," with Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick, and "Lanigan's Rabbi," with Art Carney.

A native of New York City, Stern received a degree from the NYU School of Journalism.

His first screenplays were for 1950's "Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion" and the Abbott and Costello vehicle "Lost in Alaska." Other movie credits include the screenplays for "Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town"; "The Jazz Singer," starring Danny Thomas; and "Three for the Money," starring Jack Lemmon and Betty Grable. He co-wrote and directed 1979's "Just You and Me, Kid," starring George Burns, and 1992's "Missing Pieces," with Eric Idle and Robert Wuhl. For 20th Century Fox, he wrote the original script for "Target" (1985), starring Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon.

Stern's work in television won him two Emmy Awards, three Writers Guild of America Awards and a Peabody Award, as well as numerous Emmy nominations.

In l996, after Price/Stern/Sloan was sold to Putnam, Stern formed Tallfellow Inc., which sought to create a "story salon" for writers. The company aimed to be a virtual alternative story department for producers, directors, studios and independent filmmakers. His first project for Tallfellow was "Pledge of Allegiance" with Paramount Pictures.

In recent years, Stern served in the dual capacity as president and chairman of the Producers Guild of America and member of the steering committee and chair of the Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors. In 1993, the caucus named him member of the year, and he received the Distinguished Service Award for outstanding lifetime achievement. In 1992, he received the Charles FitzSimons Honorary Lifetime Member Award from the Producers Guild.

Stern is survived by his wife, actress Gloria Stroock; a son and a daughter; two grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Funeral Services and interment will be Friday at 2 p.m. at Mt. Sinai, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Hollywood Hills.

Donations may be made to the Writers Guild of America Foundation.

A Mad Libs inventor? Gee, how could we pay tribute...?

Steve Popovich, founder of Cleveland International Records, dies at 68
Published: Wednesday, June 08, 2011, 8:50 PM
John Soeder, The Plain Dealer By John Soeder, The Plain Dealer

John Petkovic and John Soeder / Plain Dealer Reporters

Steve Popovich, a veteran music-industry executive who ran Cleveland International Records and who was based here for much of his storied career, had numerous claims to fame. The biggest was his key role in one of the best-selling albums of all time, Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell.”

Popovich died Wednesday morning at his apartment in Murfreesboro, Tenn. He was 68.

The cause of death has not been determined, according to his son, Steve Popovich Jr.

Popovich was a music-industry insider, but also a working-class maverick who worked outside the corporate system. He played a vital role in the careers of the Jacksons, Frankie Yankovic, Boston, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent and many others.

While other record companies showed no interest in Meat Loaf, Popovich sensed potential and released the singer’s “Bat Out of Hell” through Cleveland International in 1977. The multiplatinum collection of mock-operatic rock ’n’ roll rhapsodies yielded several hit singles, including the Top 20 smash “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

Others had written off Meat Loaf as an overweight misfit. But “Bat Out of Hell” was doggedly worked by Popovich for more than a year -- radio station by radio station, region by region -- until the misfit become a chart-topper.

The album has sold 14 million copies in the United States alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

“Steve would discover something and want to share it with everyone,” said friend Cindy Barber, owner of Cleveland’s Beachland Ballroom. “And he had this rare enthusiasm that made things happen.”

“Bat Out of Hell” was “magic,” Popovich recalled during a 2002 interview.

“Every major label passed on ‘Bat Out of Hell’ before Cleveland International picked it up," he said. "It was the day and age of the wimpy-looking, Peter Frampton-types. Then here comes Meat Loaf, this huge guy with an amazing voice.”

The album was distributed by the Epic division of CBS Records, which later became part of the Sony empire.

In 1995, Popovich and his former partners sued Sony for unpaid “Bat Out of Hell” royalties. The case was settled out of court for nearly $7 million.

As part of the settlement, Sony was required to place the Cleveland International logo on reissues of “Bat Out of Hell.” When Sony failed to do so, Popovich sued the company again. A jury awarded him an additional $5 million in damages in 2005.

Popovich was a native of Nemacolin, Pa. He moved to Cleveland when he was a teenager, following the death of his father, a coal miner.

By the early 1960s, Popovich was playing bass in a band called the Twilighters and unloading trucks at a local Columbia Records warehouse.

After working his way up the ranks of Columbia’s promotions department, he became vice president of promotions for the label’s parent company, CBS Records, in New York City.

After the Jackson 5 left Motown, Popovich signed them to Epic Records in 1975. “I've always gone with my gut,” he told The Plain Dealer in 2009.

“You're trying to evaluate if the best part of somebody's career is ahead of him or behind him. Sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong. With the Jacksons, we were right.”

Popovich was named the top promotions executive in the business by Billboard, a music-industry trade magazine. He also oversaw promotions for everyone from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen.

He resigned from CBS in 1976 and returned to Cleveland to launch his Cleveland International label.

Besides Meat Loaf, the company put out recordings by a wide variety of other artists, including Ronnie Spector and Ian Hunter.

Along the way, Popovich also championed his adopted hometown.

“Keep your eye on Cleveland,” read a Cleveland International ad. “It’s where the new breakouts are coming from.”

Popovich was the executive producer of Frankie Yankovic’s 1985 album,“70 Years of Hits with Frank Yankovic,” the first album to win a Grammy in the best polka recording category.

Popovich moved to Nashville in 1986 to become a senior vice president at Polygram Records, where he worked with country superstars such as Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson.

A decade later, Popovich was back here, running Cleveland International again.
Brave Combo, a polka band, won a Grammy for its 1999 Cleveland International release, “Polkasonic.”

“Steve was a unique creature,” said Brave Combo frontman Carl Finch.

“I didn’t know anyone who loved music as much as he did. I remember driving around with him, and he’d drive really fast, playing tamburitza music really loud.

“When ‘Polkasonic’ won a Grammy, he sent us a big bouquet of flowers. He was the kind of guy who always had our back. . . . One time, we were playing a show in Denmark and Steve came all the way there to see us.”

“My dad didn’t get into the music business for the money or the fashion, obviously,” said Steve Popovich Jr. “He was in it because he was a fan of music and had an undeniable passion for a lot of genres.”

That passion came out of growing up in the coalfields of southwestern Pennsylvania.

“Come weekends, the guys from the coal mines would come together and play music, whether it was tamburitza or polkas or folk music,” said the younger Popovich. “It was a melting pot for all types of nationalities, from Polish to Italian to Jews to Croatian to Serbs.”

Popovich’s open mind transcended music. He tried to make sense of all political opinions and religious views. On varying Sundays, you could find him in a Greek Orthodox church or a Catholic church or a Methodist church.

Popovich “was an enormously generous person,” said Alex Machaskee, former publisher and president of The Plain Dealer.

“I met him in 1970s, playing tamburitza music,” Machaskee said. “We would have a Serbian New Year’s party, and he would always show up. He loved music and loved to be around people.”

Popovich was inducted into the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame in 1997.

He recently moved to Tennessee to be near his son’s family, including grandchildren Steven and Tanner.

Other survivors include daughter Pamela Popovich and sister Barb Lemmo. Monreal Funeral Home in Eastlake is handling arrangements, which have not been finalized. Popovich will be buried in Western Reserve Memorial Gardens in Chesterland.

BERLIN — The man who typed up Oskar Schindler's list which helped save more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis, Mietek Pemper, has died in Germany aged 91, the Bavarian city where he lived said Thursday.

Pemper died Tuesday in Augsburg, southern Germany, and is to be buried in the city's Jewish cemetery Friday, when municipal authorities will order flags to be lowered to half-mast in his honour.

Born Mieczyslaw Pemper in 1920 in the Polish city of Krakow to a Jewish family, he was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp of Plaszow, where he worked as the personal typist for its feared commandant Amon Goeth from March 1943 to September 1944.

It was there that he linked up with German industrialist Schindler.

Pemper secretly read in Goeth's mail from Berlin that all factories that were not producing goods for the Nazi effort should be shuttered.

He convinced Schindler, an ethnic German from Czechoslovakia and a member of the Nazi party who first sought to profit from Germany's invasion of Poland, to abandon enamel production at his plant and make anti-tank grenade rifles.

Then Pemper, at great risk to his own life, supplied Schindler with a typed list of the names of more than 1,000 fellow prisoners to be recruited for work.

Schindler is credited with saving the lives of some 1,200 Jews through such work schemes as well as bribes paid to German officers.

Pemper later testified against Goeth and other war criminals in trials in Poland after the war. Goeth was hanged in 1946.

Schindler died in anonymity in Germany in 1974 at the age of 66, although he and Pemper remained close friends, but his story was later unearthed by Australian writer Thomas Keneally.

US director Steven Spielberg adapted the book into the 1993 film "Schindler's List" which won seven Oscars. Pemper served as an advisor on the picture.

In 2005, Pemper published his memoirs under the title "The Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler's List".

"After being forced to work for Amon Goeth and after having had the privilege to work for Oskar Schindler, I've often wondered what would have happened had there been no war and no Nazi ideology with its racist mania," he wrote.

"Goeth would probably not have been a mass murderer, nor Schindler a saver of lives. It was only the extraordinary circumstances of war and the immense power granted to individual men that revealed the nature of these men to such an impressive and terrifying degree.

"Fate had placed me between the two of them and it was like having an angel on one side and a demon on the other."

Pemper moved with his father after his mother's death in 1958 to Augsburg, where his brother had settled immediately after the war. He became a German citizen and worked as a management consultant.

Gernot Roemer, a longtime friend of Pemper's and the author of several books on Jewish life in Augsburg, described him as aN "unusually modest man" who broke his silence years after the war to relate his experiences to university, school and adult audiences.

"I am sure he never wanted to become famous or be celebrated," he wrote in the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper Thursday. "He never married and was a very lonely person."

Roemer noted that Pemper had years ago sought out Goeth's daughter, who he said never came to terms with the legacy of her sadistic father.

Augsburg Mayor Kurt Gribl said Pemper was a tireless advocate of intercultural understanding.

"With Mietek Pemper, the city has lost an important builder of bridges between the Jewish and Christian religions and a contributor to reconciliation," Gribl said in a statement.

Augsburg awarded Pemper a civic medal in 2003 and made him an honorary citizen in 2007.

British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor dies

LONDON - BRITISH travel writer and war hero Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose work includes a much-loved account of his teenage journey across 1930s Europe on foot, died Friday at the age of 96, press reports said.

The writer had lived in Greece since the 1960s but returned to England shortly before his death, according to reports citing his publisher John Murray.

He died before finishing the trilogy of books about the year-long walk he made from Rotterdam to Istanbul when he was 18, which included the hugely popular A Time Of Gifts (1977) and Between The Woods And The Water (1986).

Although some people questioned the accuracy of the events he described, Leigh Fermor was hailed for his lyrical writing and his ability to recreate the vivid worlds in which he travelled, as well as his understanding of them.

His own wartime exploits would also have filled a history book. In 1944, as a major in the British army during World War II, Leigh Fermor led a group of British officers and Greek resistance fighters in the audacious capture of the German general in command of Nazi-occupied Crete.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his action and the escapade was later recorded for posterity in a 1957 film, Ill Met By Moonlight, starring Dirk Bogarde as the intrepid British major. Leigh Fermor was knighted in 2004, a year after the death of his wife, Joan. The couple had no children.

^ amazing man, great writer. Re the accuracy of his recall, someone did a TV show retracting his steps a few years ago and was able to verify a lot of the stuff that had been questioned.

John Mackenzie, the film director who died on June 8 aged 83, was best known for The Long Good Friday (1980, starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren), a blood-soaked tale of a gangland chief's attempts to develop London's Docklands while waging war with the IRA.

Originally conceived by playwright Barrie Keeffe, the film brilliantly evoked the glitzy, sleazy underbelly of London's Docklands on the cusp of the 1980s boom and launched its star Bob Hoskins (who played the gangster Harry Shand) on a successful film career. It was Mackenzie who talked the actor through the famous final shot in which the camera registers the shifts of expression on Shand's face as it slowly dawns on him who is really driving the limousine he has got into.

Although The Long Good Friday is widely considered the best British gangster film ever made, it very nearly fell at the first hurdle. Shot in 1979, it was held back for nearly two years because the film's financiers, led by Lew Grade, thought it unpatriotic and were worried that the IRA would bomb the cinemas.

With Mackenzie away on holiday, the film was cut down by almost half an hour with the idea that it was to be sold to American television. They even went as far as re-dubbing Hoskins's voice to make it more acceptable to US audiences. Outraged, Hoskins decided to sue.

The film was eventually salvaged by George Harrison's company, Handmade Films, which bought the rights for the £900,000 it had cost to make. Despite its success with cinema audiences, Mackenzie only received a one-off payment of £15,000 for his work.

John Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh on May 22 1928 and educated at Holy Cross Academy. After reading History at Edinburgh University he studied drama and joined Edinburgh's Gateway Theatre Company. He also worked as a teacher before moving to London in 1960.

He served his apprenticeship at the BBC, as assistant to Ken Loach on such plays as Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). However, he found Loach too "pamphleteering" and their ways soon parted: "I didn't want to humiliate Harold Wilson," he recalled. "I wanted to tell gripping stories about characters in their social contexts."

Mackenzie went on to direct television plays and episodes of The Jazz Age and ITV's Saturday Night Theatre. His first film was the television drama There Is Also Tomorrow (1969), and he also directed (and co-wrote) Peter MacDougall's trilogy of gritty Glasgow television dramas, including Just Another Saturday (1975), which won the Prix Italia for Best Drama and inspired a young Robert Carlyle to embark on an acting career.

Mackenzie still largely worked for television, aside from the independent production Made (1972) until, in 1979, he directed A Sense of Freedom, based on the autobiography of the Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle, which won him a Bafta nomination.

After The Long Good Friday, Mackenzie decamped to Hollywood where he made The Honorary Consul (1982, with Michael Caine and Richard Gere), The Innocent (1985, with Liam Neeson) and The Fourth Protocol (1987, with Michael Caine), but success proved elusive.

He won critical acclaim for Ruby (1992), a biopic of Jack Ruby, the Texan nightclub owner who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald, but the film was less of a box-office hit than it might have been because its distributors refused to release it until after Oliver Stone's JFK (1991).

Mackenzie returned to Britain in 1993, later directing such films as Deadly Voyage (1996) and When the Sky Falls (2000), a taut and fluently-shot thriller based on the story of Veronica Guerin, the crime correspondent of the Irish Sunday Independent who was assassinated in 1996. In 1998 he made the acclaimed BBC drugs drama Looking After JoJo, starring Robert Carlyle.

Amiable, and with an air of mild distraction, Mackenzie was sometimes described as the "forgotten man of Scottish film", but he did not seem to mind.

"Perhaps it's because I have a very boring personality," he reflected. "I've always been slightly anonymous."

John Mackenzie married Wendy Marshall in 1956. She predeceased him and he is survived by their three daughters.

The Big Man

Clarence Clemons dies of complications from stroke
Published: Sunday, June 19, 2011, 5:04 AM

He was the spirit of the E Street Band, and the oaken staff that Bruce Springsteen leaned on.

Clarence Clemons — the Big Man with the big horn — died yesterday of complications from a stroke he suffered last weekend. He was 69.

“Clarence lived a wonderful life,” Bruce Springsteen said in a statement last night. “He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage.”

News of Clemons’ death was first reported last night on nj.com, The Star-Ledger’s real-time news website.

“He was the kahuna of surf and soul and a man that had love in his heart and, always, a smile on his face. He was my brother — my musical brother,” said original E Street Band drummer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez.

Lopez last saw Clemons when he guested at an E Street Band show in Philadelphia, in 2009. “I was in the dressing room with him, and we were laughing and talking about golfing,” said Lopez.

There have been many charismatic figures in the E Street Band, but none had the personal gravity of Clemons, the group’s Bunyanesque saxophonist.

Springsteen himself acknowledged this, always introducing Clemons last at concerts. It’s Clemons’ big shoulder that Springsteen was looking over lovingly on the famous cover of his “Born to Run” album. As his bandleader beamed at him, Clemons, black-hatted and bold, turned toward the camera and blew his sax.

Clemons seemed to be a character out of a storybook — or better yet, a widescreen movie about the triumph of a romantic gang of rock ’n’ roll renegades. Wildly popular among fans of the E Street Band, he was the sort of larger-than-life figure to whom legends accrued. Recognizing this, Clemons and Springsteen did much to play up those legends: “Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales,” Clemons’ 2009 autobiography written with Don Reo, combined genuine reflections with fiction in an attempt to capture the mythical quality of the musician.

Springsteen’s oft-told story of his initial meeting with Clemons felt biblical: With a lightning storm raging outside, the Big Man tore the door off an Asbury Park club, strode onstage, and made magic. (Springsteen would later immortalize this meeting in “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” a song on “Born to Run.”)

Was this embellished? Most likely. But reality never seemed quite big enough to accommodate Clemons.

“Mere facts,” wrote Springsteen in the preface to Clemons’ book, “will never plumb the mysteries of the Big Man.”

MINISTER’S SON

Born in Norfolk, Va., Clemons was the son of a Baptist minister who had no love for raucous rock ’n’ roll. But at the age of 9, his family gave young Clarence an alto saxophone — and soon he discovered his lung power was formidable.

By young adulthood, he excelled at music and athletics and earned a football scholarship to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Injuries suffered in a car accident prevented the young lineman from trying out for the Cleveland Browns. From then on, Clemons dedicated himself to his horn.

Clemons called his instrument “a vehicle to move my spirit around.”

“I don’t think it’s only my saxophone,” Clemons told All Access Magazine in 2008, “it’s who I am. My spiritual guide … told me that my purpose in life was to bring joy into the world. He didn’t know about my music, he didn’t know who I was. He saw my heart, he saw my soul, and he saw my determination for this life.”

On the tenor saxophone, Clemons developed a style that was considerably more than the sum of his influences: party-ready King Curtis, brassy Junior Walker, skronking Earl Bostic. Clemons could be tough, raspy and percussive, but as a carrier of melody, his shoulders were broad.

After playing with a number of Asbury Park outfits in the early ’70s, Clemons joined the as-yet-unnamed E Street Band in 1972. Along with bassist Garry Tallent, Lopez, organist Danny Federici, pianist Dave Sancious and Springsteen himself, Clemons was an original member of the group.

He was also the oldest, and it’s no exaggeration to suggest he was often treated as the in-house big brother. His saxophone became a pillar of the E Street sound, and helped anchor Springsteen’s storytelling in blues, jazz and gospel traditions.

“That night we first stood together,” said Springsteen of Clemons during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in 1999, “I looked over at C and it looked like his head reached into the clouds. And I felt like a mere mortal scurrying upon the earth, you know. But he always lifted me up. Way, way, way up. Together we told a story of the possibilities of friendship, a story older than the ones that I was writing and a story I could never have told without him at my side.”

BEAUTY AND DRAMA

Clemons’ solos on songs like “Jungleland” and “Born to Run” were quintessential rock ’n’ roll sax rides — things of beauty and drama unmatched by efforts of thousands of imitators. But Clemons also took his support role seriously. On “Spirit in the Night,” his graceful passages were part of a thick tapestry of sound. On “Hungry Heart,” the E Street Band’s first Top 10 hit, his baritone sax tugged at the bottom of the track like taffy on the sole of a sneaker.

That wasn’t the only time Clemons swapped his trademark tenor for a baritone. In the early ’70s, he kept another tool in his shed: a lilting soprano saxophone; on more recent tours, he covered the top end with a pennywhistle. Reeds weren’t all he did — with the E Street Band, Clemons also proved himself an able percussionist and an enthusiastic backing vocalist, too.

With his instantly identifiable tone and passion for all varieties of popular music, Clemons was often in demand as a session musician. When E Street activities slowed in the ’80s and ’90s, Clemons had no difficulty finding work. He played on scores of records, including Aretha Franklin’s “Who’s Zooming Who,” Twisted Sister’s “Come Out and Play” and Roy Orbison’s comeback “King of Hearts.” In 1989, he joined the inaugural version of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, where his charismatic stage presence and playful attitude fit in perfectly.

When Lady Gaga attempted to resurrect the glory of ’80s stadium rock on her recent album “Born This Way,” she called in Clemons.

“The universe is there to give you what you want,” Clemons told All Access about his multifaceted success. “You just need to be there to get it.”

Clemons also released five solo albums under his own name. “Hero,” a 1985 set produced by Narada Michael Walden, gave him a hit duet (with Jackson Browne): “You’re a Friend of Mine,” a song, ironically, about the relationship between Clemons and Springsteen. Even on his solo sets, the sax player could not elude the shadow of the Boss.

For two years, Clemons operated Big Man’s West, a rock venue in Red Bank that became something of a clubhouse for the E Street team and affiliated acts. Springsteen himself appeared at Big Man’s close to 20 times. Although the club closed its doors for good in 1983 for financial reasons, its existence helped revive the Shore sound. Many of the musicians who’d rock the Garden State (and beyond) during the late ’80s took the stage at Big Man’s, including Jon Bon Jovi and John Eddie.

Stone Pony founder Butch Pielka warned the saxophonist about the perils of running a rock club.

“He offered me some advice in the beginning, like, ‘Get out of the business,’ ” Clemons told The Star-Ledger this year. “My accountant agreed with him: ‘Just consider that you had a party for two and a half years, and invited all your friends, and you picked up the tab.’ That’s what it was like.”

STILL THE BIG MAN

Clemons’ celebrity never quite faded. But in recent years, a series of debilitating ailments kept him out of the limelight. The Big Man was felled by multiple spinal surgeries and knee replacements. Undeterred, he continued to blow from his wheelchair. (“He’s always on time, he’s always in pain,” wrote Don Reo in “Big Man.”)
The musician lived long enough to see “Who Do I Think I Am?,” a documentary about his life, air at the Paramount Theatre in his beloved Asbury Park this April. Hobbled by his health problems, he nevertheless took the stage at the Paramount and answered questions and signed autographs, smiling all the while.

Under the stagelights, surrounded by those who loved him, Clemons was in his element. Pushing 70, he rehabbed hard, hoping for a chance to join the E Street Band on tour in 2012.

He told Rolling Stone magazine in February that as long as he had a mouth, a brain and a pair of hands, he would keep on playing. Nobody who saw Clemons perform would ever have doubted it: his dedication was total. The saxophone was a conduit for his spirit, he assured us, and that spirit was a colossus.

Far beyond the boardwalk of Asbury Park, those big notes will keep echoing.

Ryan dunn of jackass dead. I don't know why, but this really bums me out. Normally celebrity deaths don't really get to me. Dunn was always one of my favorites on the Jackass crew. Anyway, rip.

R.I.P. Details so far:

Maybe it's too soon, illegal, and based on the reported burns...impossible; but I'm sort of hoping the crew will try and pull off some Weekend-At-Bernies-esque stunts as a final salute to a fallen brother.

"Columbo" star Peter Falk has died at the age of 83.

Family members tell KNX-1070 that Falk died Thursday night at his home in Beverly Hills. They declined to discuss the cause of death.

Wife Appointed Conservator of Ailing 'Columbo' Star

The actor had been suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's disease, according to his adopted daughter, Catherine Falk.

In 2009, a judge established a conservatorship for the ailing actor after a court battle between Catherine and wife of more than 30 years, Shera Falk.

Falk won four Emmys for his starring role in the television detective series, "Columbo." He also received Academy Award nominations for movies in 1959 and 1960.

Rest in peace, TV’s Detective Columbo.

Man that sucks. I spent many an hour in college cutting morning classes and taking in Columbo on A&E.

R.I.P...

Nick Charles, who started off as a taxi driver and later became the first sports anchor at CNN, died Saturday after battling bladder cancer since 2009. He was 64.

Charles died peacefully, looking out at the spectacular land that drew him to Santa Fe, New Mexico, his wife, Cory, said.

Charles began at CNN on the network's first day, June 1, 1980, and covered nearly every sporting event over the years.

He was paired with Fred Hickman for most of the next two decades on "Sports Tonight," a show that beat ESPN in ratings when the upstarts were battling for viewers. To this day, he and Hickman remain one of the longest-lasting anchor duos in television.

Topps, the trading-card company, put Charles' million-dollar smile on a bubble gum card, a rarity for a television personality. People magazine once dubbed him one of the most handsome men in America.

"Nick was your friend from the moment you met him -- and he stayed your friend forever," said Rick Davis, who was one of Charles' producers at CNN in the 1980s. "All of us who had the very good fortune to have been his friend have so much to remember about how he touched our lives in his own special way."

At his home in Santa Fe recently, Charles pointed to his signature mop of curly black hair as he scrolled through photographs of his on-air days. "Look at that thing," he said with a laugh. "It's my Billy Ray Cyrus mullet."

While the world knew Charles for his sportscaster days, it was his battle with cancer that inspired tens of thousands of people. In a recent CNN.com article, he talked openly about the dying process and preparing his family for when he was gone. He made birthday video diaries for his 5-year-old daughter, Giovanna, in the years to come.

"This is a gift from God where I need to build these memories for her, so that I'm not a blur," he said. "I feel that when I go, that I'm going to prepare a place for my daughter and my wife. I'm going to be in their heart and soul. I tell them that every day."

His message, he said, is to "never give up on life."

"It's an imperfect world, but, boy, it's still beautiful."

"What is life?" he said. "It's 20 percent what happens to you and 80 percent how you react to it."

"Find that little kernel every day that brings you pleasure and joy -- and fasten onto that. That's what's going to make life worth living. Always look for the best."

"When you're contemplating your mortality and your life," he said, "those are the things I reflect on."

The son of a taxi driver who was mostly absent from his life, Nicholas Charles Nickeas grew up poor in inner-city Chicago. In grade school, during the frigid winters when his dad didn't pay the heat bills, Charles would curl up in bed with his mother and brother to stay warm.

He struggled in high school. He had no mentors. He was too busy working late-night jobs at produce docks in desolate Chicago neighborhoods. Once, his boss pointed to mounds of rat feces, threw lye all over the floor and handed the 17-year-old Charles a pair of gloves, rubber boots and a hoe.

He scrubbed away, but thought to himself: "I'll never be trapped again in life. Never. Never."

"That was a watershed, life-changing moment for me. It really drove me to the point where I had focus in my life."

He eventually went to Columbia College Chicago, where he studied communications and journalism.

He drove a taxi to help pay for college. Even in the driver's seat, he was practicing for his broadcast career.

"I wasn't nosey, but just curious about people's life. I'd ask, 'How'd you get to this country? What was the spark that motivated you in life?' ... I don't know what it was, but people would open up."

Charles was still driving taxis in the fall of 1970 when he auditioned for his first television job, at WICS in Springfield, Illinois.

Two days later, he got the job. He took a pay cut to enter the television business: $130 a week as a sports anchor, compared with $200 driving a taxi.

He was told by his news director that his Greek name was too ethnic and to change it to something more "vanilla."

"Nick Nickeas, sounds like you got a stutter, too," the news director added.

At the age of 24, Nick Charles was born. He covered sports for WICS, before the job rolled into just about anything, from farm reports to fluff. A wolf once urinated on his leg: "The mother wolf was a little mad. We got a little too close to her cubs."

From Springfield, he worked at local stations in Baltimore and Washington before joining CNN.

And it's at CNN where he shined.

In his prime, he and Hickman had chemistry, charisma and dynamism -- a duo of boundless energy. The two were revolutionary for their time, a white and black man sitting side-by-side live every night in studios from the once-segregated South.

"We just clicked from the very beginning," Hickman said in an interview before Charles' death. "In television, you always have personality conflicts. Nick and I never had one. Nick and I have always had a tremendous relationship."

Hickman's favorite memory with his long-time friend came in the 1980s when they arrived in Los Angeles for the Cable Ace Awards. Stretch limousines and other luxurious cars were parked everywhere. "We pulled up in a red Ford Tempo," Hickman said with a laugh.

His favorite line ever uttered by Charles came after Mike Tyson demolished an opponent: "Tyson tore his meat house down."

"I still don't know what it means," Hickman said, "but I love it."

Charles covered everything from the Olympics to the Super Bowl to the Kentucky Derby. But boxing was his passion.

He covered some of the most classic boxing matches -- when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, when Roberto Duran quit and told Sugar Ray Leonard, "No mas."

Seeing an undefeated Tyson get knocked out by Buster Douglas in Tokyo in 1990 was epic.

"That night was magical," Charles said. "It speaks to the uncertainty, that anybody's cloak of invincibility can be ripped away."

Charles would cry when he talked about the strength of boxers, because when he looked at the ring, he saw young men like him from the inner city who had to rely on themselves to reach success.

"You have to walk down that alley way to the ring," he said. "You're going to get hit. You have to take pain to get it. You have to fight through fear."

"There's just such an empathy I have for these guys. They want it so badly."

In an interview in March, he had said he hoped to make it to one more Easter, to see his dream home completed in May, to see his daughter play the piano, to reach his 65th birthday on June 30. He made three of those four goals.

"If I don't make it," he said, "there's no need for any pity parties."

"People won't remember who you are or what you said," he said. "It's really about: Are you going to be remembered as a good person?"

"That's victory to me. That's success."

Said Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide: "His passing is a loss to CNN, to the sports world and to the fans and friends everywhere who were with him to the end of his extraordinary life."

Charles is survived by his wife, Cory, of 13 years and their daughter, Giovanna. He has three children from two previous marriages: Jason, 39; Melissa, 36; and Katie, 24.

Nick Charles and his family formed the "Embrace Life" project to help stop child trafficking and abuse, increase access to education and allow children to embrace life. Working with the humanitarian organization World Vision and the TEACH NOW: Preventing Child Labor in the Philippines project, the family welcomes support here: www.worldvision.org/EmbraceLife.

Randall Adams, 61, Wrong Convicted of Murder, Freed With Help of Errol Morris' documentary, The Thin Blue Line

Randall Dale Adams, who spent 12 years in prison before his conviction in the murder of a Dallas police officer was thrown out largely on the basis of evidence uncovered by a filmmaker, died in obscurity in October in Washington Court House, Ohio. He was 61.

Mr. Adams had chosen to live a quiet life divorced from his past, and when he died on Oct. 30, 2010, of a brain tumor, the death was reported only locally, said his lawyer, Randy Schaffer. The death was first widely reported on Friday.

The film that proved so crucial to Mr. Adams was “The Thin Blue Line,” directed by Errol Morris and released in 1988. It told a harrowing story, and it had the effect of helping to bring about Mr. Adams’s release the following year.

“We’re not talking about a cop killer who’s getting out on a technicality,” Mr. Morris said when Mr. Adams was set free. “We’re talking about an unbelievable nightmare.” [cont'd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26adams.html

(FWIW, the writer doesn't mention that Adams reportedly tried to sue Errol Morris for the film's revenue.)

The ailing wife of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan has died without seeing her husband, a Republican in prison for corruption who repeatedly asked for early release or transfer to be by her side.

Lura Lynn Ryan passed away on Monday at a hospital in Kankakee. She was 76.

The mother of six was diagnosed with lung cancer in December. She was under chemotherapy treatment and relied on an oxygen tank 24 hours of the day.

Lynn was the former governor's high school sweetheart. As first lady of Illinois from 1999 through 2003, she was a quiet advocate for her husband even amid the corruption scandal that led to his conviction.

She developed sepsis, a serious infection of the blood, in January, prompting her husband to file an emergency motion asking a federal appeals court to let him stay in a county jail near the Kankakee hospital where she was confined.

Her husband, who served as secretary of state before becoming governor in 1999, is scheduled for release in 2013, when he is 79 years old. He was convicted in 2006 of accepting gifts and steering state contracts to a friend while he was Illinois secretary of state. His chief of staff and 70 others were also convicted in the corruption case.

The former governor has repeatedly sought to be released early so he can be with his ailing wife.

In 2008, he was joined by Democrats including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), then the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, in asking President George Bush to commute his 6 1/2-year sentence. A written appeal from the former governor's son to President Barack Obama, and request to a judge last December were rejected.

Fox Sports is reporting that former NCAA basketball hero Lorenzo Charles has died in a bus crash. Charles, 47, is remembered for helping the N.C. State Wolfpack beat Houston in the 1983 NCAA basketball championship with a dunk at the buzzer. Charles grabbed Dereck Whittenburg's 30-foot shot and dunked it at the buzzer to give N.C. State a 54-52 win and its second national title, sending coach Jim Valvano spilling onto the court, scrambling for someone to hug in what has become one of the lasting images of the NCAA tournament.

Charles finished his college career two years later with 1,535 total points - 15th on the school's scoring list - and his .575 shooting percentage in 1985 remains a school record for seniors. He played one season in the NBA, averaging 3.4 points in 36 games with the Atlanta Hawks in 1985-86, and played internationally and in the Continental Basketball Association until 1999.

Rest in peace to an O.G. - original game changer.

"...just one more thing--"

I love Columbo. I think I have all the old (pre ABC) ones on DVD. even my mother-in-law, who speaks very little English, enjoys them.

If you haven't seen it-- check out Falk's performance in "Made", w/ Vince Vaughn hamming it up. Very funny. Also, check out when he guested on "Dinner w/ Friends", or whatever Fabreau's show was called. Great stuff. Lots of talk about Cassavetes. - Love the quote he shared from the director-- "Man... is God in ruins."

Check out a low-budget Peter Falk movie where he plays a tavern owner whose in the gambling racket for the mob. The movie also stars Timothy Hutton, Frank Vincent, Freddie Prince Jr. & Lauren Holly, who has to get it on with Prince Jr. to pay off her husband's gambling debts. All in all, a good low-key, character-driven movie.

BERLIN (AP) — Otto von Habsburg, the oldest son of Austria-Hungary's last emperor and the longtime head of one of Europe's most influential families, died Monday, his spokeswoman said. He was 98.

Habsburg died in his sleep at his home in Poecking in southern Germany, where he had lived in exile since the 1950s, spokeswoman Eva Demmerle told The Associated Press. A longtime advocate of European reunification, he campaigned against communism and for the removal of the Iron Curtain.

Born in 1912 in what is now Austria, Habsburg witnessed the family's decline after the empire was dismantled and Austria became a republic following World War I. He became head of the family at his father's death in 1922 and continued to claim the throne until the 1960s.

He was a member of the European Parliament for the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union in southern Germany and also served as president of the Pan-European League from 1979 to 1999.

In that role, he was instrumental in helping organize the Pan-European Picnic peace demonstration in 1989 on the border of Austria and Hungary. The border was briefly opened in a symbolic gesture, which created the opportunity for 600 East Germans to flee communism months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It was the first time an Eastern European nation had opened its borders, and is widely seen as the start of the fall of communism.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso mourned the passing of "a great European ... who gave an important impetus to the European project throughout his rich life".

"He made a central contribution to the opening of the Iron Curtain and the peaceful reunification of our continent that had been divided for too long," Barroso said in a statement. "I will particularly remember his strong stance against all forms of totalitarianism and on Europe's fundamental values."

Habsburg was born in the Austrian city of Reichenau, the oldest son of Charles I, whose family ruled much of central and eastern Europe for centuries.

But after Austria and Germany lost World War I, the Austria-Hungarian Empire was dismantled, Charles I had to resign and Austria went on to become a republic.

In 1919, Charles and his family had to leave the country for what turned out to be permanent exile in various European countries.

After his father's death in 1922, the 10-year-old Otto officially took over as the head of the House of Habsburg.

Otto tried to negotiate his return to Austria in 1935 and again in 1938 when he even sought to become chancellor to fight the expected invasion by Hitler's troops, but could not gather enough support.

Instead, he found a channel through the U.S. embassy in Paris to contact President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later claimed to have prevented Allied bombings of a number of Austrian cities by pleading with the U.S. military.

He was also credited with having helped about 15,000 Austrians escape the Nazis. At the same time, as he told the Austrian paper Die Presse in 2007, he negotiated Austria's postwar fate with Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle.

Still, he was not allowed to return to Austria until 1966, five years after he officially abdicated the crown. He later claimed to be baffled by the hostility and criticism in his home country.

Habsburg's wife, Regina, died last year. The couple had seven children. Their eldest son, Karl, now runs the family's affairs and has been the official head of the House of Habsburg since 2007.

Habsburg will be buried July 16 in the Emperor Tomb in Vienna, below the Austrian capital's Capuchin Church.

A Cleveland legend...

Jane Scott, legendary Plain Dealer rock writer, dies at age 92
Published: Monday, July 04, 2011, 6:00 AM Updated: Monday, July 04, 2011, 8:04 AM
By John Soeder, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Jane Scott, the legendary journalist who covered four decades of rock 'n' roll for The Plain Dealer, died early today after a long illness, said Linda Scott, Jane Scott's niece. She was 92. Details of the funeral services, to be held in Ann Arbor, Mich., are pending. A memorial service will be held at a later date in Cleveland.

Her byline appeared in the newspaper thousands of times, above music features, concert reviews and her long-running "What's Happening" column in Friday! magazine.
Scott was on a first-name basis not only with music fans throughout Northeast Ohio, but with most of the luminaries in the rock 'n' roll universe.
Paul McCartney was an old pal of hers. Bruce Springsteen serenaded her in concert. And when she met Bob Dylan, the World's Oldest Teenager (as Scott was affectionately known) got a peck on each cheek from the Voice of a Generation.
Scott was never at a loss for a great rock 'n' roll story. She regaled several generations of readers with countless firsthand tales about popular music's most colorful characters.
"I've always loved music," Scott said shortly before she retired in 2002, after 50 years at the newspaper.
"The thing about rock is, it gets you up on your feet and dancing and you forget everything else," she said. "The beat gets you going."
Her first day at The Plain Dealer was March 24, 1952, three days after the world's first rock concert -- Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball at the old Cleveland Arena.
Scott started out at as a society writer. She soon worked both ends of the demographic spectrum, writing columns for teens and senior citizens.
When the Beatles performed Sept. 15, 1964, at Public Hall, Scott was there, reporter's notebook in hand. "I never before saw thousands of 14-year-old girls, all screaming and yelling," she recalled later. "I realized this was a phenomenon. . . . The whole world changed."
So did Scott's job. She became The Plain Dealer's rock writer and scored an interview with McCartney when the Fab Four returned to headline Municipal Stadium in 1966.
Scott went on to cover the Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie and other future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers early in their careers.
Scott often told the story about the time she tagged along when Jimi Hendrix bought a blue Corvette at a Shaker Heights dealership.
Or the time Jim Morrison told her he wanted to start his own religion. The Lizard King invited Scott backstage for a beer before a 1967 show by the Doors. "The first sound Cleveland heard from Morrison onstage was a burp," Scott wrote.
Or the time she was interviewing Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and he parked himself behind a piano in the lounge of the old Stouffer Tower City Plaza Hotel. They sang "California Girls" together.
Scott was born May 3, 1919, in Cleveland. She was a 1937 graduate of Lakewood High School and a 1941 graduate of the University of Michigan, where she majored in English and drama and wrote for the college newspaper.
Scott enjoyed big-band music back then, with a soft spot for Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. The first record she owned was Jimmy Rushing's "Sent for You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today)," which she used to play on a wind-up Victrola.
In later years, Scott was partial to Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and the Doobie Brothers hit "Black Water." Her favorite album was Springsteen's "Born to Run."
She also was a fan of the late Frank Zappa, Ray Davies of the Kinks and Lyle Lovett.
Amid the stacks of CDs and music memorabilia in her Lakewood condominium, Scott kept a snapshot of herself and Lovett. She captioned the photo "Before Julia" -- a little fun at the expense of Lovett's ex-wife, Julia Roberts.
Before she came to The Plain Dealer, Scott was a code breaker for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She later became women's editor of the Chagrin Valley Herald. She also did stints in advertising and public relations.
Scott had a knack for spotting talent. "His name is Bruce Springsteen. He will be the next superstar," she predicted in her review of a 1975 performance by the Boss at the Allen Theatre -- months before he graced the covers of Time and Newsweek. During another Cleveland concert years later, Springsteen dedicated "Dancing in the Dark" to Scott.
She wrote about the Raspberries, the Michael Stanley Band, Pere Ubu and hundreds of other lesser-known local acts, too.
"You always felt you were extremely important when Jane was talking to you," said Michael Stanley. "We traveled around the country for 15 years on tour and whenever Cleveland came up, the first thing people wanted to talk about wasn't the Browns or the Indians or Eric Carmen. It was, 'Jane Scott -- she's so cool!'
"She always gave glowing reviews. Even if she hated something, she could find the good in anything, which is a wonderful, admirable quality. . . . Jane deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."
Scott was "a champion -- more like her, please," said Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.
As musical trends came and went through the '70s, '80s and '90s -- from punk to new-wave to grunge -- Scott rolled with rock's changes, writing about everyone from Mariah Carey to Wendy O. Williams, Nine Inch Nails to Nirvana, Prince to U2.
Scott got sunburned at Live Aid, slogged through the mud at Woodstock '94 and braved the mosh pits at Lollapalooza.
Along the way, she became a celebrity herself. She was profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and People magazine, among other publications. CNN and MTV did stories on her, too.
Scott's retirement made headlines around the world. She was interviewed by the BBC and Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America."
As Scott once put it herself, with typical understatement: "I'm a little bit of a character."

complete story with archived stories, audio and photos.

Anne Massey has died.

Had to share this tribute to Jane Scott of whom I posted on her passing yesterday. Holly Gleason writing for No Depression

Former NBA and UNLV star Armen Gilliam died Tuesday night of a heart attack.

According to WTAE in Pittsburgh, Gilliam, a 6-foot-9 power forward nicknamed "The Hammer" during his playing days, collapsed while playing basketball at a gym in Collier Township. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead at age 47.

Gilliam was a star on the top-ranked UNLV Runnin' Rebels team that won a record 38 games and went to the NCAA Final Four in 1987 before being selected with the No. 2 overall pick by the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Draft later that same year.

He also played for the Charlotte Hornets, Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Utah Jazz in a 13-year professional career before retiring in 2000.

Gilliam, who changed the spelling of his first name from Armon, finished his NBA career with 12,700 points, averaging 13.7 points and 6.9 rebounds in 929 games.

Betty Ford. She was 93.

Former First Lady Betty Ford Dies At 93
by Ina Jaffe

July 8, 2011

Former first lady Betty Ford has died at the age of 93.

During her life she helped change the way Americans think and talk about breast cancer, women's rights and substance abuse.

But, before she became a first lady, an advocate for women's rights and an inspiration to people struggling with addiction, Betty Ford was a dancer.

The former Elizabeth Anne Bloomer studied and taught dance in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she grew up. She pursued her passion in New York City, where she trained with the legendary Martha Graham, but soon returned home at the bidding of her mother.

Following a brief first marriage, she met a young lawyer named Gerald Ford. They married in October 1948. The next month, he was elected to Congress. A quarter-century later Gerald Ford became vice president and then later replaced the disgraced Richard Nixon as president.

In a 1987 interview Betty Ford told NPR that the move to the White House made her feel empowered too.

"I suddenly was somebody," she said. "I wasn't just the suburban housewife taking care of the children and being the backup to this man who was out front."

What she did and thought and said became part of the national dialogue, and Ford didn't hold much back. Just weeks after moving into the White House she announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and undergone a mastectomy. Such things weren't discussed publicly then. Her candor was revolutionary for such a prominent figure, but she believed that in the post-Watergate era, Americans wanted more openness and honesty in Washington.

And, as she said in a 1975 interview on CBS' 60 Minutes, she also wanted to raise awareness of breast cancer: "I thought there are women all over the country like me. And if I don't make this public, then their lives will be gone or in jeopardy. And I think it did a great deal for women as far as the cancer problem is concerned."

Reportedly thousands of women did get tested as a result of Betty Ford's frankness. As first lady she was also outspoken about her support for abortion rights. During and after her time in the White House she campaigned for the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment.

At a 1981 rally in Washington, D.C., she told cheering crowds that she intended "to be on the front lines until the success is ours."

Ford's candor never seemed to hurt her: A 1976 poll showed she was more popular than Gerald Ford. There were buttons during the campaign that said "Betty's husband for president."

But decades of holding down the home front while her husband pursued his career, as well as coping with a painful pinched nerve in her neck, took a toll on Ford.

In a 2002 NPR interview she said that after leaving the White House she realized — or rather, her family confronted her and told her — that she had a problem with alcohol and pills.

"I was very upset, I was very hurt, I was very cross about it because I felt that here I'd spent my whole married life looking after my children and my husband and how can they say these things and how can they confront me this way," she said.

In that interview Betty and Gerald Ford described how her struggle and recovery led to the founding of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs. It became as famous as some of the celebrities who sought treatment there, though they've made up only a tiny percentage of the center's tens of thousands of patients. At first Betty Ford didn't want the center named after her. But Gerald Ford said, lucky thing it was.

"It had a certain attractiveness to people who needed help, that they could go to a place where a former first lady was chairman," the former president said.

Betty added that "it was very helpful for women too, because women had in many ways been underserved. And if my name was on there it was a safe place for women to come and be treated."

In the first of her two autobiographies, Betty Ford wrote:



She was more than merely interesting, however. Betty Ford made a genuine impact on the nation, just by being herself and speaking her mind.

Former Motorhead guitarist Wurzel has died of heart failure at the age of 61. Wurzel, real name Michael Burston, joined Lemmy's outfit in 1984 and appeared on nine albums before leaving in 1995.

He got his nickname while serving in the British Army as a corporal, when colleagues compared his appearance and character to kids' TV scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. He was already 35 years old and working as a builder when he sent a demo tape to Lemmy following the departure of Brian "Robbo" Robertson from the band. That led to an audition and the end of his pub-rock hobby.

Sherwood Schwartz, writer-creator of two of the best-remembered TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch," has died at age 94.
Great niece Robin Randall said Schwartz died at 4 a.m. Tuesday.
Schwartz was hospitalized at Cedars Sinai Medical Center about a week ago with an intestinal infection and underwent several surgeries. His wife, Mildred, and children have been at his side, said his nephew, Douglas Schwartz.
Sherwood Schwartz and his brother, Al, started as a writing team in TV's famed 1950s "golden age," said Douglas Schwartz, the late Al Schwartz's son.
"They helped shape television in its early days," Douglas Schwartz said. "Sherwood is an American classic, creating `Brady Bunch' and `Gilligan's Island,' iconic shows that are still popular today. He continued to produce all the way up into his 90s."
Sherwood Schwartz was working on a big-screen version of "Gilligan's Island," his nephew said. Douglas Schwartz, who created the hit series "Baywatch," called his uncle a longtime mentor and caring "second father" who helped guide him successfully through show business.
Success was the hallmark of Sherwood Schwartz's own career. Neither "Gilligan" nor "Brady" pleased the critics, but both managed to reverberate in viewers' heads through the years as few such series did, lingering in the language and inspiring parodies, spinoffs and countless standup comedy jokes.
Schwartz had given up a career in medical science to write jokes for Bob Hope's radio show. He went on to write for other radio and TV shows, including "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."
He dreamed up "Gilligan's Island" in 1964. It was a Robinson Crusoe story about seven disparate travelers who are marooned on a deserted Pacific Island after their small boat wrecks in a storm. The cast: Alan Hale Jr., as Skipper Jonas Grumby; Bob Denver, as his klutzy assistant Gilligan; Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer, the rich snobs Thurston and Lovey Howell; Tina Louise, the bosomy movie star Ginger Grant; Russell Johnson, egghead science professor Roy Hinkley Jr.; and Dawn Wells, sweet-natured farm girl Mary Ann Summers.
TV critics hooted at "Gilligan's Island" as gag-ridden corn. Audiences adored its far-out comedy. Schwartz insisted that the show had social meaning along with the laughs: "I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications."
He argued that his sitcoms didn't rely on cheap laughs. "I think writers have become hypnotized by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character," Schwartz said in a 2000 Associated Press interview.
"When you say the name Gilligan, you know who that is. If a show is good, if it's written well, you should be able to erase the names of the characters saying the lines and still be able to know who said it. If you can't do that, the show will fail."
"Gilligan's Island" lasted on CBS from 1964 to 1967, and it was revived in later seasons with three high-rated TV movies. A children's cartoon, "The New Adventures of Gilligan," appeared on ABC from 1974 to 1977, and in 2004, Schwartz had a hand in producing a TBS reality show called "The Real Gilligan's Island."
The name of the boat on "Gilligan's Island" _ the S.S. Minnow _ was a bit of TV inside humor: It was named for Newton Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chief in the early 1960s had become famous for proclaiming television "a vast wasteland."
Minow took the gibe in good humor, saying later that he had a friendly correspondence with Schwartz.
TV writers usually looked upon "The Brady Bunch" as a sugarcoated view of American family life.
The premise: a widow (Florence Henderson) with three daughters marries a widower (Robert Reed) with three sons. (Widowhood was a common plot point in TV series back then, since networks were leery of divorce.) During the 1970s when the nation was rocked by social turmoil, audiences seemed comforted by watching an attractive, well-scrubbed family engaged in trivial pursuits.
Schwartz claimed in 1995 that his creation had social significance because "it dealt with real emotional problems: the difficulty of being the middle girl; a boy being too short when he wants to be taller; going to the prom with zits on your face."
The series lasted from 1969 to 1974, but it had an amazing afterlife. It was followed by three one-season spinoffs: "The Brady Bunch Hour" (1977), "The Brady Brides" (1981) and "The Bradys" (1990). "The Brady Bunch Movie," with Shelley Long and Gary Cole as the parents, was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.
It was followed the next year by a less successful "A Very Brady Sequel."
Sherwood Schwartz was born in 1916 in Passaic, N.J., and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. His brother, already working for Hope, got him a job when Sherwood was still in college.
"Bob liked my jokes, used them on his show and got big laughs. Then he asked me to join his writing staff," Schwartz said during an appearance in March 2008, when he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "I was faced with a major decision _ writing comedy or starving to death while I cured those diseases. I made a quick career change."
Besides his wife, Schwartz's survivors include sons Donald, Lloyd and Ross Schwartz, and daughter Hope Juber.

Singer for 60s band The Grass Roots dies in Fla.


The Associated Press
Published: Tuesday, Jul. 12, 2011 - 10:04 am
EUSTIS, Fla. -- An official in Florida says the lead singer of 1960s rock band The Grass Roots has died near Orlando.

Rob Grill sang on such hits as "Midnight Confessions," "Temptation Eyes," and "Let's Live for Today." He was 67.

Medical examiner director Michael Hensley said Tuesday that Grill died Monday at a hospice facility in Lake County, Fla., a suburb of Orlando.

A woman who answered the phone at Cornerstone Hospice confirmed Grill was a patient but declined to offer further information, citing privacy concerns.

He had a good voice.

where my homeowners at? can't believe you guys didn't acknowledge the passing of george ballas:

r.i.p. awesome dude

The old man from Home Alone.


SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Character actor Roberts Blossom, who played the white-bearded neighbor "old man Marley" in the movie "Home Alone," has died at age 87 in Southern California.

Daughter Deborah Blossom tells the Los Angeles Times that her father died of natural causes July 8 at a Santa Monica nursing home.
Blossom starred on Broadway, as well as in television and movies. He won three Obie Awards for his off-Broadway work.

Movie credits include "The Hospital," ''Slaughterhouse-Five," ''The Great Gatsby," ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind," ''Escape From Alcatraz," ''Resurrection" and "Doc Hollywood." Blossom had a starring role in the 1974 cult horror movie "Deranged."

But he may be best-remembered as the neighbor in 1990's "Home Alone." Blossom's TV credits include "Another World," ''Moonlighting," ''Northern Exposure" and "In the Heat of the Night."

Jerry Ragovoy, who wrote or collaborated on some of the most soulful ballads of the 1960s, including the Rolling Stones hit “Time Is on My Side” and the Janis Joplin signatures “Piece of My Heart,” “Cry Baby” and “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 80.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/arts/mus...dead-at-80.html

disappointed he didn't name his kid "Deborahs"

Artist and famous Grandson Lucien Freud is dead at 88

The Paintings of Lucien Freud

Bob Trendler: The maestro who brought music to ‘Bozo’s Circus’
Posted in Chicago Media blog by Robert Feder on Jul 21, 2011 at 12:00am

Chicago baby boomers have lost another symbol of their youth to that big top in the sky.

Bob Trendler, the cheerful bandleader of Bozo’s Circus whose career spanned 40 years on WGN-Channel 9 and WGN-AM (720), died this week in Palmetto, Florida. He was 99.

To generations of viewers, Trendler’s name will always be synonymous with the 13-piece Big Top Band he directed on the venerable children’s show from 1961 until his retirement in 1975. Despite a 10-year waiting list for tickets at one time, Tribune Co. gradually downgraded the most popular and successful locally produced children’s program in television history before finally canceling it in 2001.
In a tribute to “Mr. Bob” on his Svengoolie blog Wednesday, fellow Chicago television icon Rich Koz wrote: “When the Bozo show took off, he and his band would play the theme music, the music in and out of every segment, the accompaniment for all the circus and entertainment acts that appeared, as well as songs for skits that Bozo and his pals did. . . . And so we lose another link to those fantastic nostalgic days of the old school Bozo show.”

The son of a Viennese prima donna, Trendler was an accomplished pianist who began his career in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. He joined WGN as an arranger and conductor in 1935 during the heyday of live music on radio, and was named musical director of the WGN Orchestra in 1956.

Al Hall, longtime producer and director of Bozo’s Circus, recalled why Trendler was the “obvious choice” to become the show’s bandleader in The Golden Age of Chicago Children’s Television. “The station had Bob under union contract and they had to pay him whether they used him or not,” Hall told author Ted Okuda. “So when they came up with Bozo’s Circus they decided to use him for that. Oh, his band was great! And Bob himself was a good addition to the show; he played the part of the maestro very well.”

Reluctant to start *another* of those threads but it seems worth observing that the current death toll in Oslo is thought to be 84 at the summer camp and 7 from the earlier bombing.
The Christian extremist they have in custody is due to be charged for everything.

BREAKING NEWS: Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat

Amy Winehouse has been found dead at her home in London, it has been reported.

The Back To Black singer was apparently found at 4pm and her death is believed to be unexplained.

So sad but were just waiting at this point.

She joined the 27 club too. Sad.

I'm surprised there's no thread on this yet. He left behind a 1500 page writing which he sent to facebook followers. Really crazy stuff.

he advocates playing video games such as call of duty for target practice.


7a. Apprehension
If you for some reason survive the operation you will be apprehended and arrested. This
is the point where most heroic Knights would call it a day. However, this is not the case
for a Justiciar Knight. Your arrest will mark the initiation of the propaganda phase.
7b. Your trial offers you a stage to the world

New England singer/songwriter Bill Morrissey has passed away at 59.

Michael Cacoyannis, the Cyprus born-filmmaker who directed the 1964 film classic “Zorba the Greek,” starring Anthony Quinn, has died at an Athens hospital. He was 89.

Officials at a state-run hospital said Cacoyannis died early Monday of complications from a heart attack.

Cacoyannis won multiple awards and worked with such well-known actors as Melina Mercouri, Irene Papas, Tom Courtenay and Candice Bergen.

But we was best known internationally for the Academy Award-winning “Zorba the Greek.”

Gervase Duan "G.D." Spradlin, a character actor best known for playing authority figures in television and films, including "The Godfather: Part II" and "Apocalypse Now," has died. He was 90.

Spradlin died of natural causes at his cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo on Sunday, said his grandson, Justin Demko.

A former oil company lawyer and millionaire independent oil producer who didn't begin acting until he was in his 40s, the tall and lean Oklahoma native played his share of doctors, ministers, judges, military officers and historical figures during his more than 30-year acting career.

He portrayed President Lyndon Johnson in the 1985 TV mini-series "Robert Kennedy & His Times" and President Andrew Jackson in the 1986 TV movie "Houston: The Legend of Texas."

He also played an admiral in the 1988 TV mini-series "War and Remembrance" and was a pro football coach in the 1979 film "North Dallas Forty" and a college basketball coach in the 1977 film "One on One."

His breakthrough movie role as a character actor was as corrupt Nevada Sen. Pat Geary in director Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather: Part II" in 1974.

Five years later, Spradlin was the Army general who sent Martin Sheen's Capt. Willard up river to find and kill Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz in Coppola's Vietnam war movie "Apocalypse Now."

Spradlin, whose other film credits include "The War of the Roses" and "Ed Wood," retired from acting after playing Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in the 1999 comedy "Dick."

"He brought a lot of what he had done in his life to what he did on the screen" said Demko, adding that his grandfather had a lifelong love of language and could recite passages from Shakespeare and poetry from memory until the end.

The son of two school teachers, Spradlin was born Aug. 31, 1920, in Pauls Valley, Okla. He received a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Oklahoma before serving in the Army Air Forces in China during World War II.

After earning a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1948, he became an attorney for Phillips Petroleum Co. and then became head of Phillips' legal department in Caracas, Venezuela.

After returning to Oklahoma in 1951, Spradlin became an independent oil producer. He was so successful that he retired in 1960 and spent time cruising the Bahamas with his family on a yacht.

"Being rich changes surprisingly little," Spradlin told The Times in 1967. "You'll still have to have an absorbing interest in life, something to do to make you feel alive."

For Spradlin, that was acting.

In late 1963 his daughter Wendy, a member of the children's classes at the Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City, wanted to audition for a role in a production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

To give her moral support, Spradlin accompanied her to the theater and wound up auditioning for — and landing — a role in the play, the first of three local productions he appeared in.

Spradlin, who earned a master's degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Miami in 1965 and was a doctoral candidate in the same field, had directed John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign in Oklahoma and had an unsuccessful run for mayor of Oklahoma City in 1965.

A year later, he moved his family to Los Angeles.

He was so new to show business, he told The Times in 1980, that when a secretary at the William Morris Agency asked him if he had any film, "I told her no, but that there was a drugstore around the corner and I could run over and buy some. I thought you must have to bring your own film to have a screen test."

Spradlin's first wife Nell, with whom he had two daughters, Tamara Kelly and Wendy Spradlin, died in 2000.

In 2002, he married Frances Hendrickson, who survives him, as do his two daughters and five grandchildren.