Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

News Thump is a very British parody site, not unlike The Onion. They do some very good work. I read them frequently, they do an excellent job of ripping Trump.

http://newsthump.com/2017/07/17/george-a-romero-probably-dead/


I'm reminded of a story of Vincent Price and Peter Lorre attending the funeral of Bella Lugosi, allegedly true: Peter turned to Vincent and whispered "Should we drive a stake through his heart, just to make sure?"

I was wondering what Roger had been up to since the end of the election. It had been rumored that Trump was planning a conservative news channel and that Ailes would head it up, but then Trump made the mistake of winning the election and look at where we are now. Well, it turns out that Ailes had hemophilia. Apparently in '12 he said that actuaries said he had 6-12 years left, I guess he didn't make the odds. Still, to make it to 77 with that condition is an achievement.

Aside from heading up Fox and exploiting his position of authority to sexually exploit women, he previously was the chief media advisor to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. He also helped create the Merv Griffon Show and several other TV programs.

I can't say that I'm too sorry to see him gone. It would have been nice to see him have a reformation and make some amends for his past behavior, but it would be so totally out of character as to be all but an impossibility.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/18/528925119/roger-ailes-former-fox-news-ceo-dies-at-77

Last week Tuesday he was felled by pancreatic cancer at the age of 71. In addition to the original BSG, he also appeared in the remake and penned five BSG novels. He appeared in many TV shows of the era, including CHiPs, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and MacGyver.

https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/richard-hatch-dead-battlestar-galactica-star-captain-apollo-dies-1201980779/

Very sad! She was returning to LA from London and about an hour out suffered cardiac arrest. CPR was performed, she was rushed to the hospital was was reported to be in stable condition. Apparently that report was optimistic and she passed away this morning.

It was reported that her footage for Star Wars Episode 8 was complete, I anticipate some hurried rewrites and reshoots and a big explosion at a rebel base.

I was going to say that it's been a rough year for celebrities with the passing of David Bowie et al, but the reality that every year is a rough year for celebrities. We lose a lot of them every year, and it is sad. I just saw Carrie on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, she was talking about her new book which excerpted her diaries that she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movies. She was 19.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/27/507109015/carrie-fisher-actress-beloved-for-playing-princess-leia-dies-at-60

mainly because I never really followed his music. I know he was talented, but I'm pretty firmly rooted in '70s/'80s rock. Maybe I'll pick up a copy of 1999 some day.

Anyway, I do have one Prince story that I can relate, not that it's personal. It involves Stevie Nicks song, Stand Back. The bass line was done by Prince, but it was done in a peculiar way. He arrived at the studio and told everyone to get out. He laid down the track and left the mix for Stevie the next day. When she heard it, she was pissed. She expected him to play it on a bass guitar, instead he programmed a synth to play it.

I find that kind of amusing. But to be honest, I much prefer Christine McVie to Stevie.

NPR's Fresh Air podcast had a recent interview with Questlove, the head of the band The Roots who are the band for The Tonight Show. Questlove met Prince on several occasions and told some very good stories. If you're interested, you can find a link to download it here.

It's been an interesting couple of days with the passing of both Harper Lee and Umberto Eco, but I wanted to share this, which is something that a lot of people don't know about:

Harper Lee was instrumental in nudging Berk Breathed in resurrecting Bloom County.

She sent him a note pleading with him to continue producing Outland, and though it took a while, eventually he brought it back.

Berk posted this on his Facebook page today:

Paul died of septic shock and multiple organ failure following a heart attack last year, does not sound like a pleasant way to go.

So Upstairs adds an excellent guitarist, vocalist, and song writer. I got to see Starship perform at, believe it or not, the Arizona State Fair. They did a great guitar solo that segued in to White Rabbit. Excellent show.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jefferson-airplane-guitarist-paul-kantner-dead-at-74-20160128?utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=012916_16&utm_medium=email

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-dead_us_56aaf6fce4b00b033aae9d77

Mojo Nixon had a song "Don Henley must die!" which contained the line "Don't ever let him get back together with Glenn Frey!" Well, Don is safe: Glenn died yesterday at age 67.

The cause was reported as pneumonia along with rheumatoid arthritis and acute ulcerative colitis, sounds like he might have had an autoimmune disorder. Sounds like a very unpleasant collection of symptoms.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/18/463510638/glenn-frey-guitarist-for-the-eagles-dead-at-67


Elsewhere in the good news/bad news department, Rolling Stone spoke with David Bowie's long-time producer, Tony Visconti. Tony reports that Bowie wrote and demo'd five tracks for a new album to follow Blackstar! So there's a chance that we'll see an EP at some point if Bowie's estate decides to complete the tracks.

There was one paragraph that was particularly touching to me:

Bowie had already finished Blackstar by November. But even before then, Visconti noticed the tone of some of the lyrics and told him, "You canny bastard. You're writing a farewell album." Bowie simply laughed in response. "He was so brave and courageous," says Visconti. "And his energy was still incredible for a man who had cancer. He never showed any fear. He was just all business about making the album."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowie-planned-post-blackstar-album-thought-he-had-few-more-months-20160113


Last night my wife and I watched Galaxy Quest, what a wonderful Rickman movie. We also have Love Actually, which we watched last month, and all of the Potters. While the role of Snape was a great and memorable performance, I really don't want to watch them as a memorial to Rickman. My wife mentioned, while reading IMDB, that he also did Quigly Down Under. Not a great movie, but it had its moments. I'd like to get ahold of his movie January Man, starring Kevin Kline, where Rickman played a gay architect and did a really great job.

Wow. He battled cancer for 18 months and was 69 years old. I hadn't heard he was ill.

His final album was released Friday, I'm going to pick it up today. Well, his final except for all of the 'lost tapes' albums that we'll be getting for the next 20 years.

http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/01/david-bowie-legendary-artist-dies-at-69/

Leonard Nimoy passed away Friday, and there are so many links that I'm not going to bother with one.

It cued an interesting moment. I'm now working full-time, and my wife bought me a really nice BluTooth speaker called an OontZ (by Cambridge Soundworks) so I listen to music most of the day. Yesterday I was listening to all of my Beatles, it was actually the second day of this and I finished up.

Well, I had not yet heard the news. Our network/system admin Rob came in and told it to my boss, whose office is directly across the hall from mine, and Rob turned around and told me.

I was kinda gobsmacked. I remember when Dee Kelly died, and I wasn't surprised as he was the oldest member of the regular cast. James Doohan had a massive heart attack a couple of years before he passed, again, no big surprise. And Majel Barret's passing, for some reason, was just 'another celebrity death', which is sad because she's one of the few cast whom I've seen in person.

But Nimoy had a different stature. The odd thing was that I'm not sure that I saw the original run of Star Trek, I think perhaps the first thing that I remember him in was Paris in Mission: Impossible. I know I was watching Trek in the initial reruns as we were constantly playing it in '71 when I was in the 3rd grade, and the series ran from '66 to '69. So that's probably my oldest memory of ST:TOS. And I always preferred Spock over Kirk, and my pursuit of computer science has probably reflected that.


So here's where the Beatles come back in to the picture. As Rob told me about Leonard's death, my phone was playing In My Life. I can be very sensitive to music, and I feel myself softening and being close to tears just thinking about the lyrics.

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.

Several songs affect me for various reasons: Jackson Brown's For A Rocker always puts a lump in my throat, Manfred Mann's Runner can also. So now I think I have another association.


I was the president of a science fiction/fantasy film club in Phoenix for over 20 years, and I'm still a member and still in contact with the treasurer who really runs the thing. And I sent him a link to the NPR story about Nimoy this afternoon. He replied that he felt fortunate to have seen Nimoy give a presentation at a ComicCon, I believe the Phoenix one, and he talked about his life, including a stint as a taxi driver and picking up one John Fitzgerald Kennedy.


Leonard Nimoy was definitely an amazing person and leaves behind a lot of great work that we can remember him by.