The artist's Facebook page announced the news, with the singer's rep confirming his death to Rolling Stone.
"David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a
courageous 18-month battle with cancer," the statement read. "While many
of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's
privacy during their time of grief." One of the most original and singular voices in rock & roll for
nearly five decades, Bowie championed mystery, rebellion and curiosity
in his music. Ever unpredictable, the mercurial artist and fashion icon
wore many guises throughout his life. Beginning life as a dissident
folk-rock spaceman, he would become an androgynous, orange-haired,
glam-rock alien (Ziggy Stardust), a well-dressed, blue-eyed funk maestro
(the Thin White Duke), a drug-loving art rocker (the Berlin albums), a
new-wave hit-maker, a hard rocker, a techno enthusiast and a jazz
impressionist. His flair for theatricality won him a legion of fans. Along the way, he charted the hits "Space Oddity," "Changes," "Fame,"
"Heroes," "Let's Dance" and "Where Are We Now?" among many others.
Accordingly, his impact on the music world has been immeasurable.
Artists who have covered Bowie's songs and cited him as an influence
include Nirvana, Joan Jett, Duran Duran, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn
Manson, Arcade Fire, Oasis, Ozzy Osbourne, Morrissey, Beck, Red Hot
Chili Peppers, Lady Gaga, Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails. Bowie's son, Duncan, tweeted a photo
of his father holding him early Monday morning and wrote, "Very sorry
and sad to say it's true." The singer's frequent collaborator, Brian
Eno, tweeted, "Words cannot express." "David Bowie was one of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime," Kanye West wrote on Twitter. "I pray for his friends and family." Bowie was born David Robert Jones on January 8th, 1947 in a
working-class London suburb. His father, Heywood Jones, worked in
promotions for a charity that benefitted children and his mother,
Margaret Mary Jones, was a waitress. A fight with a classmate when he
was young left the singer with a permanently dilated left pupil. He
began learning saxophone at age 13 and attended a high school that would
prepare him for a career as a commercial artist. By 20, he had spent
time at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland and dabbled in theatrical
troupes. Once he began focusing on music, he played with groups like the King
Bees, the Manish Boys (who once recorded with Jimmy Page) and Davey
Jones and the Lower Third. He took on the Bowie pseudonym – after the
knife – in an effort to prevent confusion with Monkees singer Davy
Jones. Bowie put out a folky self-titled album in 1967, but it charted poorly in the U.K. and not at all in the U.S. That would change with his next release. The album contained the hit "Changes" and its threat/promise "Look
out you rock & rollers/ One of these days you're gonna get older,"
fan favorites "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Life on Mars" and songs about
Bob Dylan ("Song for Bob Dylan") and Andy Warhol ("Andy Warhol"). (He'd
portray the latter artist years later in the film Basquiat.) It was on 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,
though, where Bowie hit his stride. In the role of the titular
rock-star also-ran, he innovated a glammy look for himself which he
amplified in his highly theatrical live shows where he'd tussle with
guitarist Mick Ronson. A far cry from the Sixties hippie idealism he'd
come up with, Ziggy was brazen and arrogant, a decadent rogue who was
also endearing to fans. In addition to the title track, "Starman,"
"Suffragette City" and "Five Years" became audience favorites. The album
would be certified gold in the U.S. in 1974. Around this period, Bowie began working behind the scenes for some of
his friends. In 1972, he produced and played saxophone on Mott the
Hoople's All the Young Dudes album, writing the album's hit
title song. That same year, he resuscitated former Velvet Underground
frontman Lou Reed's career by giving him a glam makeover on Transformer. And in 1973, he mixed Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power. A few years later, during his Berlin period, Bowie would also work on Iggy Pop's solo breakthrough LPs The Idiot and Lust for Life, touring with Pop as his pianist to support the records. Bowie kept the Ziggy Stardust persona on 1973's Aladdin Sane,
which contained "The Jean Genie," "Drive-In Saturday" and a rag-tag
cover of the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together." Pin Ups, Bowie's covers album, followed later that year. He'd attempted to retire Ziggy for 1974's cabaret-ready Diamond Dogs, but the overwhelming glamminess of "Rebel Rebel" suggested otherwise. He did an about-face on 1975's Young Americans,
incorporating soul, funk and disco into songs like the title cut and
"Fame," and he co-wrote "Fascination" with Luther Vandross. It was a
risky move, but it reached Number Two in the U.K. and Number Nine in the
U.S. He delved deeper into funk on the following year's Station to Station,
picking up a well-documented cocaine habit along the way, and scored a
hit with the buoyant "Golden Years." The album as a whole, though,
signaled a newfound interest in the avant-garde. It was to be a short-lived transformation, though, as Bowie would
disappear to Berlin and dive deeper into experimenting with music and
with drugs. Beginning with 1977's Low,
which combined art-rock with ambient minimalism, the singer stumbled on
an acidic, epic sound, bolstered by collaborating with Brian Eno. The
LP contained the U.K. hit "Sound and Vision" and set the tone for his
next two records, that year's "Heroes,"with its iconic title song, and 1979's Lodger, which contained the hit "Boys Keep Swinging." Minimalist composer Philip Glass would later write a symphony using music from Low. Bowie quit drugs in the Seventies and emerged in the Eighties with a
renewed interest in more radio-friendly music, scoring a Number One hit
in the U.K. with "Ashes to Ashes," which continued the story of Major
Tom, and the hit "Fashion." Both appeared on 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).
In 1981, he recorded the duet "Under Pressure" with Queen, weaving his
voice with Freddie Mercury's for another Number One in the U.K. and a
Top 30 single in the U.S. In 1983, he put out Let's Dance,
which he co-produced with Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers. The
collaboration, which included lead guitar work by Stevie Ray Vaughan,
proffered the singles "Let's Dance," "China Girl" and "Modern Love."
He'd follow these with the hit "Blue Jean," off Tonight the
following year. Bowie notched his final Number One in the U.K. in 1985
with a cover of Martha and the Vandella's feel-good hit "Dancing in the
Street," a duet with Mick Jagger. With the exception of the Beatlesesque 1986 single "Absolute
Beginners," the rest of the Eighties were less fruitful for Bowie
musically. He put out Never Let Me Downin 1987, and closed out the decade as a member of the hard-rock group Tin Machine, which would put out another record in 1991. Bowie changed his musical output again in 1993 and put out the electronic-influenced Black Tie White Noise,
another co-production with Nile Rodgers that proved less commercially
successful in the U.S. He flirted with industrial on 1995's Outside, and the following year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. In 1997, he celebrated his 50th birthday with an all-star concert at
New York City's Madison Square Garden; Lou Reed, the Cure's Robert
Smith, Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, Pixies' Black Francis, Foo
Fighters and Sonic Youth all joined him onstage. He pioneered "Bowie
Bonds," a way in which people could invest in him, that year, earning
him $55 million. Also, that year, he collaborated with Trent Reznor on
the Brian Eno co-produced Earthling, and returned to rock on 1999's Hours…. It's a sound he'd improve upon on 2002's Heathenand the following year's Reality, both of which found him working again with Visconti. The singer suffered a heart attack in 2004 and subsequently retired
from touring, though he'd make occasional appearances, singing with
Arcade Fire and David Gilmour, among others. He made his last singing
appearance onstage in 2006, where he dueted with Alicia Keys. During
this time, he also sang on records by TV on the Radio, Scarlett
Johansson and Arcade Fire. Concurrent with his music, Bowie also enjoyed a long career as an
actor. His first starring role was as Thomas Jerome Newton in 1976's The Man Who Fell to Earth,
a surrealistic film about a marooned alien attempting to bring water
back to his home planet. In 1980, he played the titular role in a
theatrical production of The Elephant Man. He played a vampire in Tony Scott's 1983 erotic horror The Hunger and had roles in Julien Temple's 1986 film Absolute Beginners, Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ and David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In 1986, he played the shrub-haired, codpiece-wearing Jareth the Goblin King in the puppet-starring musical Labyrinth. Beginning in 2000, he hosted a TV series based on The Hunger, and he played himself in Zoolander and the TV show Extras. He also played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, lent his voice to SpongeBob SquarePants and played himself in the Vanessa Hudgens film Bandslam. In 2013, Bowie put out his first album in a decade, The Next Day,
which went to Number One on the U.K. chart and Number Two in the
States. He had recorded the LP in secret and announced its existence on
his birthday that year. Two days before his death, the singer put out ★ (pronounced "Blackstar"),
this time on his birthday. The record reflected the
ever-evolving artist's interest in jazz and hip-hop. "We were listening
to a lot of Kendrick Lamar," producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone of
the recording sessions. "We wound up with nothing like that, but we
loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn't do a
straight-up hip-hop record. He threw everything on there, and that's
exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid
rock & roll." The artist's latest theatrical foray was the 2015 off-Broadway play Lazarus, which stars Michael C. Hall and continues the story of Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth. Along with songs from throughout Bowie's career, it also featured new tunes. Bowie married his first wife, Mary Angela Barnett, in 1970. A year
later, Angela gave birth to the couple's son, Duncan Zowie Haywood
Jones. The couple would divorce in 1980. Despite his marriage, Bowie claimed to be gay in the British music press in 1972, and, in 1976, he came out to Playboy as bisexual. He'd later regret the assertion. "The biggest mistake I ever made was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual," he told Rolling Stone in 1983. "Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting."
He also said he'd never done "drag." He later recanted his unhappiness
with coming out as bisexual, saying he didn't like the way Americans put
emphasis on it. In 1992, Bowie married Somali-American model Iman. The couple had a daughter named Alexandria Zahra Jones in 2000. "He always did what he wanted to do, and he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way," Visconti wrote on Facebook after the news of Bowie's passing was out. "His death was no different from his life – a work of art. He made ★
for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would
be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man,
full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is
appropriate to cry."
Pat Harrington Jr., an actor and comedian who portrayed the farcically macho building superintendent Dwayne Schneider in “One Day at a Time,” a sitcom that explored sexism, harassment and other tribulations through the lens of a divorced working woman and her two teenage daughters, died Jan. 6 at 86.
His daughter Tresa Harrington announced the death on her Facebook page but did not provide other details. In November, she wrote that he had Alzheimer’s disease and was in rapidly declining health.
Although billed as a supporting actor on “One Day at a Time,” Mr. Harrington provided such welcome comic relief that the program’s popularity and longevity — it aired on CBS from 1975 to 1984 — was owed as much to him as to anyone. Years afterward, producer Norman Lear, who also created “All in the Family,” said Mr. Harrington “turned out to be the comic strength of the show.”
Seemingly coming from nowhere — he was a total unknown to Lear when the show was being cast — Mr. Harrington was in fact a seasoned comic performer. His father had been a song-and-dance man in vaudeville and on Broadway, a late-night carousing companion of fellow Irish American entertainers such as Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien and James Dunn.
“They’d sit down for eggs as I’d be going off to parochial school,” Mr. Harrington once recalled.
In the late 1950s, his talent for wisecracking and mimicry brought him influential admirers such as Jonathan Winters, Jack Paar, Steve Allen and Danny Thomas. He subsequently worked in nightclubs, released comedy albums, and won small roles in films such as “Easy Come, Easy Go” (1967) with Elvis Presley and “The Candidate” (1972) with Robert Redford.
But it was “One Day at a Time” that made Mr. Harrington a household name during its protracted prime-time run.
The star was Bonnie Franklin, playing an independent-minded divorced woman in Indianapolis who struggles to raise two willful daughters (played by Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli). Set against the second wave of feminism, the show explored previously taboo sitcom subjects such as divorce, rape, teenage pregnancy and menopause.
Franklin’s Ann Romano is both sensible and exasperated as she juggles a career, her home life and come-ons from men such as Mr. Harrington’s Schneider, a seedy building custodian who tells her, “The ladies in this building don’t call me ‘super’ for nothing.”
Rendered by Mr. Harrington, Schneider was less a threatening wolf than a clueless chauvinist. Fancying himself a ladies’ man, he sports a Clark Gable-inspired pencil mustache and swaggers about with his tool belt around his waist and a cigarette pack tucked in the sleeve of his white T-shirt.
As the character was conceived, Schneider was a married man and an unrepentant adulterer who used fake maintenance problems to enter women’s apartments. Mr. Harrington, however, doubted that such an unpleasant type would fit in a show filled with far more likeable people.
On Mr. Harrington’s insistence, Schneider was recast as a bachelor with a comically grandiose sense of his appeal to the opposite sex. “At first, Schneider was pretty much a lecher,” he told People magazine. “I made sure that got changed to ‘amorous.’ It bespeaks a certain respect for women.”
Over the years, Schneider surrenders his pursuit of Romano and becomes a surrogate father figure to her daughters. In the show’s final year, Mr. Harrington won an Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series.
Daniel Patrick Harrington Jr. was born in Manhattan on Aug. 13, 1929. He grew up watching his father’s career wax and wane.
“Until I was schoolage, we drove around the country in a Hupmobile and Dad worked week to week, hand to mouth by singing, playing drums and entertaining,” he told Robert Pegg, author of the book “Comical Co-Stars of Television.” “He didn’t want that for his kids because he knew it was a very hard life.”
Mr. Harrington went to a Catholic military school and graduated from Fordham University, where he also later received a master’s degree in political philosophy. After Air Force service, he began working in the NBC mailroom, a job he parlayed into a junior advertising salesman position for the network.
He told Pegg that he drew notice for his elaborate office pranks. He once paid an actor $20 to impersonate David Sarnoff — who was chairman of the parent company of NBC and was universally known as “the General” — to approach him one morning before a weekly sales-staff meeting.
“How are sales?” the imposter Sarnoff asked.
In a move that might have been career suicide, Mr. Harrington shot back with annoyance, “Why don’t you just get back upstairs and tend to your electrons and I’ll take care of sales.”
“Good for you, young man,” Sarnoff replied, patting his shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”
Mr. Harrington then strutted past aghast colleagues, quipping, “Look, I’ll be out for the rest of the day.”
He often entertained clients at Toots Shor’s, the Manhattan watering hole, where, as the evenings wore on, he liked to trot out various voices and characters. He had his greatest success conjuring a fictional Italian immigrant named Guido Panzini, part of a gag he honed over many years and many drinks.
Panzini was at times the self-preserving first mate of the doomed ocean liner Andrea Doria, a charming golf pro who once played the toughest course in the world — up the side of Mount Kilimanjaro — and a veteran of the Italian submarine service in World War II who learned English by sneaking up on American warships at night to watch movies.
Winters, who was scheduled to substitute host on Paar’s variety show, caught the routine one night and booked him in 1958. That appearance sparked widespread demand for Panzini to appear on other shows.
Mr. Harrington so completely inhabited the Panzini character — and his style was so deadpan — that an official with the U.S. immigration service reportedly expressed concern to the network that the agency could find no record of his entry into the country.
Over the next few years, Mr. Harrington became part of the ensemble on “The Steve Allen Show” and won a recurring role as Thomas’s son-in-law on the sitcom “The Danny Thomas Show.”
In addition to many theater parts, he did voice-over work for cartoons, made a spate of game-show appearances and had a frequent role in the early 1970s as a prosecutor on “Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law,” an ABC legal drama starring Arthur Hill.
His first marriage, to Marjorie Gortner, with whom he had four children, ended in divorce. In 2001, he wed Sally Cleaver, an insurance executive. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
In recent years, Mr. Harrington popped up as a guest on TV shows such as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Hot in Cleveland.” But in a varied career, he made his peace with being associated with a single sitcom, “One Day at a Time,” emphasizing that it had brought him steady work in a notoriously unsteady profession.
He told Pegg, “I got 10 years of work out of this series, and if I was penalized by typecasting, then that’s the price you have to pay.”
Loved this collection of poetry on the subject on cats. These aren't your typical sentimental corny poems about felines. These are writings only true cat lovers can relate to.
December 31, 2015 (aged 65)
Los Angeles, California
AP) — Singer Natalie Cole, the daughter of jazz legend Nat "King" Cole who carried on his musical legacy, has died.
Publicist Maureen O'Connor says Cole died Thursday night. She was 65. O'Connor had no details about how or where Cole died.
Cole had battled drug problems and hepatitis that forced her to undergo a kidney transplant in May 2009.
Cole's 1991 album, "Unforgettable ... With Love," sold some 14 million copies and won six Grammys. It featured reworked versions of some of her father's best-known songs.
On the title cut, "Unforgettable," she sang along with her father's taped version to create a memorable duet.
Nat "King" Cole died of lung cancer in 1965.
QueenElizabethII smiles at Prince Harry as
she inspects soldiers at their passing-out Sovereign's Parade at
Sandhurst Military Academy, April 12, 2006, in Surrey, England.
Actor Dick Van Patten, who played the father on the TV show Eight Is Enough, died Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., of complications from diabetes. He was 86. The news was confirmed in a statement by his publicist, Jeff Ballard. Van Patten began his acting career at the age of 7, moving from roles on Broadway to television. He appeared in I Remember Mama, which ran from 1949 to 1957, as well as The New Dick Van Dyke Show. More recently, Van Patten appeared in Arrested Development and Hot in Cleveland. But it was the role of patriarch Tom Bradford on ABC's Eight Is Enough, which ran from 1977 to 1981, for which Van Patten was most famous. Van
Patten was an animal lover who co-founded Dick Van Patten's Natural
Balance Pet Foods in 1989; he founded the National Guide Dog Month,
which raises awareness and money for nonprofit guide dog schools. Van Patten is survived by his wife of 62 years, Patricia Van Patten, as well as his three sons, Nels, Jimmy and Vincent.
I first heard of this book while listening to NPR, where Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), was discussing the case of Mr. Walter Mcmillan, a sweet gentle black man who was falsely accused of murder in Alabama by police who perjured themselves in order to solve the murder of a white woman Ronda Morrison, and spent 6 years on death row awaiting his execution. He was sentenced by the racist Judge Robert E. Lee Key Jr.
Possibly the most powerful book I've read this year thus far, and I urge everyone to read this book. Sadly it's a book that probably won't be read by the people who need to read it the most.
Character actor best known as diner owner in 50s sitcom and as police officer Murray in The Odd Couple dies in hospital
Al Molinaro, the actor known to millions of television viewers for his
roles as the diner owner Al Delvecchio in Happy Days, and Murray the cop
in The Odd Couple, has died at the age of 96.
His son, Michael, said he died on Friday at Verdugo Hills hospital in
Glendale, California, following complications from gallstone problems. Molinaro retired from acting in the 1990s having made his
breakthrough in a comedy improv class two decades earlier. Producer
Garry Marshall heard about Molinaro and hired him for the part of police
officer Murray Greshler in The Odd Couple, the TV version of Neil
Simon’s play about feuding room-mates. It starred Tony Randall as
photographer Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as sports writer Oscar Madison
and featured Molinaro as one of their friends, a simple-minded
policeman who at times seemed as much of a threat to his friends as he
did to any criminals. Michael Molinaro said his father “was good friends till the end” with
everyone involved in The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970-75. He took up his role in Happy Days in 1976, two years into the
decade-long run of the 1950s sitcom that starred Ron Howard and Henry
Winkler. He replaced Pat Morita as the owner of Arnold’s Drive-In, with
his trademark saying “Yep-yep-yep-yep”, and remained until 1982. In ABC’s 1992 Happy Days Reunion Special, Molinaro defended the show
from criticism that it sentimentalised the 1950s. “In the industry, they
used to consider us like a bubblegum show,” he said. “But I think they
overlooked one thing. To the public in America, Happy Days was an
important show.” Molinaro took his character of Al into the spinoff Joanie Loves
Chachi and, in 1987, he and Anson Williams, who played Potsie on Happy
Days, started Big Al’s, a midwestern diner chain. He brought Al back for
a brief appearance in Buddy Holly, a 1995 music video for the group
Weezer that was directed by Spike Jonze. The actor played a grandfather in The Family Man, a sitcom that aired
from 1990-91, and continued to make guest appearances on other series
through the early 90s. He also filmed commercials. Molinaro had a son, Michael, from his first marriage. He and his second wife, Betty Farrell, married in 1981. -The Guardian
Robert Loggia, a durable and versatile tough guy actor in movies and TV shows including Brian De Palma’s 1983 drama “Scarface” and “Big,” died Friday at his home in Los Angeles, his widow Audrey confirmed to Variety. He was 85. Loggia had been battling Alzheimer’s Disease for the past five years,
according to his widow. They had been married for 33 years. He was nominated for a supporting actor Academy Award for “Jagged
Edge” in 1986 for his portrayal of blunt private detective Sam Ransom. Loggia’s most notable film credits included “An Officer and a
Gentleman,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Independence Day,” David Lynch’s “Lost
Highway” and “Big,” in which he played a toy company owner and performed
a memorable duet on a giant foot-operated piano with Tom Hanks. He
played Miami drug lord Frank Lopez in “Scarface.” Loggia was nominated for an Emmy in 1989 for his portrayal of FBI
agent Nick Mancuso in the series “Mancuso FBI” — which has a spin-off of
the character he created in the “Favorite Son” miniseries starring
Harry Hamlin — and again in 2000 for his guest star role in “Malcolm in
the Middle.” Loggia was a versatile supporting actor, assembling credits on three
different episodes of “The Rockford Files” as three different
characters. He also appeared in three different “Pink Panther” movies
with three different character names. Loggia played Anwar Sadat in the 1982 TV movie “A Woman Called Golda”
opposite Ingrid Bergman. He also portrayed a fearsome mobster-bakery
owner Feech La Manna on several episodes of “The Sopranos.” Loggia was a native of Staten Island, born to Italian immigrants. He
received a football scholarship to Wagner College and transferred to the
University of Missouri. After serving two years in the U.S. Army, he
began classes with Stella Adler and at the Actors Studio. “He loved being an actor,” his widow told Variety. “He used to say that he never had to work. He never had to wait tables.” “I loved Bob like a father,” Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns told Variety. “I will miss him tremendously.” He broke into the entertainment business performing in stage plays in
New York. His first film credit came in 1957 in the noirish “The
Garment Jungle.” His first TV credits came in 1958 as lawman Elfego Baca
in a series of Walt Disney TV shows. He starred in the 1966-67 series
“T.H.E. Cat” as a cat burglar who would introduce himself as “T. Hewitt
Edward Cat.” Loggia’s TV credits included “The Untouchables,” “Columbo,”
“Gunsmoke,” “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “The Big Valley,”
“Rawhide,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Starsky and Hutch,”
“Charlie’s Angels,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Kojak,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “The
Bionic Woman,” “Frasier” and “Monk.” His other film roles include “Revenge of the Pink Panther,” “Trail of
the Pink Panther,” “Curse of the Pink Panther,” “Over The Top,”
“Necessary Roughness,” “Return to Me” and “Armed and Dangerous.” Loggia is survived by his widow; three children, Tracy, John and Kristina, and a stepchild, Cynthia. His family has asked that donations be made to the Motion Picture and
Television Fund. Loggia was an active supporter of the fund. Funeral services will be private.
Yogi Berra, known as much for his quotable malapropisms as for his
baseball career, has died at his home in New Jersey, according to Dave
Kaplan, director of the Yogi Berra Museum. The Hall of Famer was 90
years old. Berra was a Yankee alongside fellow legends Joe
DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle from 1949 to 1965, helping the team win 10
World Series championships. He played in more World Series (14) than any
other major leaguer and was named MVP three times. In the
grueling role of catcher, Berra caught the only perfect game in World
Series history in 1956. But his skill in the batter's box is what first
made him famous — and feared. Standing 5 foot 7 and weighing
185 pounds, Berra had a reputation for rising to any occasion. He drove
in 100 or more runs in five seasons and flirted with the mark in four
more. In the 75 World Series games he played, Berra struck out only 17
times.
"He was one of the most feared
hitters the game had ever seen. Teammate Hector Lopez said, 'Yogi had
the fastest bat I ever saw. He could hit a ball late, that was already
past him, and take it out of the park. The pitchers were afraid of him
because he'd hit anything, so they didn't know what to throw. Yogi had
them psyched out and he wasn't even trying to psych them out.' "
Berra,
born Lawrence Peter Berra in St. Louis, dropped out of school in eighth
grade to go to work to support his family. Still, he went on to publish
three books, including It Ain't Over... in 1989 and 1998's The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said, which made The New York Times best-seller list.
The Times obituary has a roundup of some of Berra's "both nonsensical and sagacious" Yogi-isms:
"'You can observe a lot just by watching,' he is reputed to have declared once, describing his strategy as a manager.
"'If
you can't imitate him," he advised a young player who was mimicking the
batting stance of the great slugger Frank Robinson, 'don't copy him.'
"'When
you come to a fork in the road, take it,' he said while giving
directions to his house. Either path, it turned out, got you there.
Jackie Collins -Born
Jacqueline Jill Collins
4 October 1937
Hampstead, London, England -Died
19 September 2015 (aged 77)
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Best-Selling Novelist Jackie Collins Dies At 77 Best-selling novelist Jackie Collins has died of breast cancer at the age of 77.
Collins' wildly popular books included the Lucky Santangelo series and Hollywood Wives and its sequels. Her latest book, The Santangelos, came out this summer; Collins gave numerous interviews about the book without mentioning her diagnosis or any treatments.
PEOPLE magazine reports the English novelist had decided to keep her illness private, and that a few days before her death she told the magazine she had no regrets over that decision.
Collin's novels, filled with glamour and high drama, sold more than 500 million copies. And her tales of life among the rich and famous in Hollywood were often inspired by real-life experiences.
Jackie Collins' Mob Princess Serves Up A Cookbook You Can't Refuse April 12, 2014
As a teenager, she followed the lead of her older sister, Joan Collins, and was briefly an actress.
But in an interview with NPR last year, Jackie Collins said she knew movies weren't going to be her life. "I was always an out-of-work writer," she said.
"So I wrote a book called The World is Full of Married Men," she said. "I found that in my teenage years married men would be chasing me everywhere and going, 'Oh, yeah, well, my wife is different, but you know, she doesn't really understand me.' ... I wanted to write and turn the double standard on its head."
Not all her books centered on the Hollywood elite; the Lucky Santangelo series revolved around the daughter of a mob boss. "She's such a brilliant character because she does all the things that women would like to do, she says all the things they would like to say — and she gets away with it," Collins said.
In their statement, Collins' family described a "wonderfully full life" and four decades spent entertaining readers.
"She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force," the family statement continued. "We already miss her beyond words."
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it
Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all
How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone
But it's time you started living
It's time you let someone else do some giving
Love is all around, no need to waste it
You can have a town, why don't you take it
You're gonna make it after all
You're gonna make it after all
It's quite possible I enjoyed this novel just as much as I did "women", which has been my favorite of his for a long time. No other writer makes me laugh out loud the way Bukowski does. He always rocks my world.
Good Times.
Any time you meet a payment. - Good Times.
Any time you meet a friend. - Good Times.
Any time you're out from under.
Not getting hassled, not getting hustled.
Keepin' your head above water,
Making a wave when you can.
Temporary lay offs. - Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs. - Good Times.
Scratchin' and surviving. - Good Times.
Hangin' and a' jiving- Good Times.
Ain't we lucky we got 'em - Good Times.
Mmmmmm
Just lookin' out of the window.
Watchin' the asphalt grow.
Thinkin' how it all looks hand-me-down.
Good Times, yeah, yeah Good Times
Keepin' your head above water
Makin' a wave when you can
Temporary lay offs. - Good Times.
Easy credit rip offs. - Good Times.
Hangin' in a challenge - Good Times
Scratchin' and a'hustlin'. - Good Ti-imes
Ain't we lucky we got 'em - Good Times.
One of my biggest fears is losing my partner in the same manner Mary lost Jay. I guess you could say it's one of the reasons I wanted to read this book. It's one of those novels that really hits home, and stirs up your deepest and darkest fears. My favorite part of the novel was when Mary's father pulled her to the side after Jay's death, and gave her the most tender words of solace and advice a father could give a daughter at a time like that. It most definitely was a depressing read, but very insightful, and will stay with me always.
Bobby Hutcherson's late-'60s partnership with tenor saxophonist Harold Land had always produced soulful results, but not until San Francisco
did that translate into a literal flirtation with funk and rock. After
watching several advanced post-bop sessions gather dust in the vaults, Hutcherson decided to experiment with his sound a bit, but San Francisco still doesn't wind up the commercial jazz-funk extravaganza that purists might fear. Instead, Hutcherson and Land
stake out a warm and engaging middle ground between muscular funk and
Coltrane-style modality; in other words, they have their cake and eat it
too. Joined by pianist/keyboardist Joe Sample (also of the Jazz Crusaders), acoustic/electric bassist John Williams, and drummer Mickey Roker, Hutcherson and Land
cook up a series of spacious, breezy grooves that sound unlike any
other record in the vibist's discography (even his more commercial
fusion sessions). The selections -- all group-member originals -- often
skirt the edges of fusion, but rarely play it as expected; they might
float some spare tradeoffs over a loping, heavy bass groove, throw in an
oboe solo by Land,
or -- as on the slowest piece -- keep time only with intermittently
spaced piano chords. It's all done with enough imagination and harmonic
sophistication to achieve the rare feat of holding appeal for
traditional jazz and rare-groove fans alike. It's a shame Hutcherson didn't explore this direction more, because San Francisco
is not only one of his best albums, but also one of his most appealing
and accessible. [Note: The song descriptions in the liner notes often
match up with different titles on the CD reissue, suggesting that the
tracks may have been scrambled to a startling degree. If the liners are
correct, the actual CD running order is "A Night in Barcelona," "Goin'
Down South," "Procession," "Ummh," "Jazz," and "Prints Tie."]
"I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living."
— Zora Neale Hurston
