Obituaries for 2018

[sneakypete]

@Sanguine

Thanks! Now I vaguely remember hearing about some of it.

[berdie]

Freddie Hart...of Easy Loving fame.

[EasyAce]

Freddie Hart...of Easy Loving fame.

During my high school days, there was a local record shop that habitually included free demo singles when you bought a record there. One of the ones I got was a demo single of Freddie Hart. The intended plug side was "Hang On to Her." It was a quiet but earnest plea of a song, he didn't overstate the lyric when he sang it, and the rhythm section sounded almost as much like a Memphis soul rhythm section as a Nashville countrypolitan one. The song went nowhere so far as I know and it was a shame. I really loved that record.

RIP Mr. Hart.

[skeeter]

Willie McCovey died today, at 80.

A SF Giants institution. No articles to be found yet.

[Applewood]

Willie McCovey died today, at 80.

A SF Giants institution. No articles to be found yet.

Coming in now.   Here's one:

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/willie-mccovey-dies-at-80-giants-announce-passing-of-hall-of-fame-first-baseman/

[skeeter]

Coming in now.   Here's one:

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/willie-mccovey-dies-at-80-giants-announce-passing-of-hall-of-fame-first-baseman/

Thanks.

Well we still have Willie Mays.

[Machiavelli]

Willie McCovey died today, at 80.

A SF Giants institution. No articles to be found yet.

@EasyAce

[Applewood]

Thanks.

Well we still have Willie Mays.

Indeed.  But Willie is getting on in years too.  So many of the truly greats are leaving us.  Before long we will be left with primadonnas like Barry Bonds.  Ugh!

[Machiavelli]

The Dodgers had a saying about McCovey: "He hits (Don) Drysdale like he owns him."

[Machiavelli]

Well we still have Willie Mays.

Mays is 87.

[EasyAce]

McCovey is one of seven to win Rookie of the Year, a league Most Valuable Player award, and an All-Star Game MVP.

The others: Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Fred Lynn, Cal Ripken, Jr., Ichiro Suzuki, and Mike Trout. Four (McCovey, Mays, Robinson, Ripken) are Hall of Famers; two more (Ichiro and Trout) will be, and one (Lynn) might have been if not for the injuries that dogged him much of his career.

! No longer available

RIP Stretch

[EasyAce]

Indeed.  But Willie is getting on in years too.  So many of the truly greats are leaving us.  Before long we will be left with primadonnas like Barry Bonds.  Ugh!

@Applewood
We still have, from oldest to youngest, Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Luis Aparicio, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Bill Mazeroski, Orlando Cepeda, Brooks Robinson, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, Billy Williams, Lou Brock, Phil Niekro, Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Perez, Ferguson Jenkins, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Rod Carew, Jim Palmer, Don Sutton, Rollie Fingers, Carlton Fisk, Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt, Dave Winfield, George Brett . . . among others, speaking of Hall of Famers . . .

[Applewood]

Thanks @EasyAce   You just made me feel a lot better. 

[GrouchoTex]

Willie McCovey died today, at 80.

A SF Giants institution. No articles to be found yet.

I was fortunate enough to see him play.
I had heard a story that he took an aluminum bat out to practice one day.
He hit the ball so hard that the players left the field, in fear of their lives.

[catfish1957]

I was fortunate enough to see him play.
I had heard a story that he took an aluminum bat out to practice one day.
He hit the ball so hard that the players left the field, in fear of their lives.

Same here.  He was an Astros killer.  A fond early baseball memory of mine was my childhood Astros hero Larry Dierker facing the Giants back in the late '60's.  If I remember correctly McCovey got a few hits off him, but he did strike Mays out twice.

[EasyAce]

Thanks @EasyAce   You just made me feel a lot better.

Willie McCovey, RIP: Sweet swing, sweet man

[GrouchoTex]

Willie McCovey, RIP: Sweet swing, sweet man

Another great article @EasyAce

[mountaineer]

Wasn't his nickname "Stretch"? Saw him at a Giants-Pirates doubleheader at Forbes Field way back when.

[jmyrlefuller]

Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman, minor league football player turned legendary sportswriter, dies at 86

Zimmerman, who played as an offensive lineman at Stanford University before transferring to the Ivy League Columbia University, briefly played professional football in 1963 for the Westchester (County) Crusaders of the Atlantic Coast Football League, a prominent minor league of the 1960s that provided players to the NFL. He began his career as a sportswriter writing for various newspapers in New York City, most extensively for the New York Post, where he covered the NFL and the Olympic Games. He signed with Sports Illustrated in 1979, where he wrote until his incapacitation by a series of strokes in 2008.

Zimmerman was among a class of writers (another including Hunter S. Thompson) steeped in New Journalism, which replaced the staid, stick-to-the-facts approach to writing with a narrative style strongly influenced by fiction (in Zimmerman's case, George Orwell was one of his biggest influences). Near the end of his career, he maintained an anachronistic style by typing out his stories on typewriter and sending it to the Sports Illustrated headquarters by fax. He would thoroughly analyze anything football-related, from players to sportscasters to teams, and frequently cited obscure and difficult-to-find statistics by using his VCR to record and review game film. He is credited with creating the power rankings, an early and persistent form of "clickbait" that subjectively ranks teams from best to worst.

Obituary from Pro Football Talk

Wikipedia

[EasyAce]

Wasn't his nickname "Stretch"? Saw him at a Giants-Pirates doubleheader at Forbes Field way back when.

Yes it was. In fact, it's on his Hall of Fame plaque, as player nicknames usually are . . .

[Machiavelli]

Fr. Robert Taft, feisty ecumenist and liturgical historian, dies at 86

John Burger
Aleteia
November 2, 2018

Jesuit who became a Byzantine priest worked to help disparate parts of the Church understand one another

Fr. Robert Francis Taft, preeminent historian of the Eastern Christian liturgy and an outspoken voice in relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, died at his home in Weston, Massachusetts, November 1, at the age of 86.

Fr. Taft, who taught at a pontifical institute in Rome for several decades, is best known for his six-volume History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Born into a family that had ties to a U.S. president and a senator from Ohio, he grew up in New England and entered the Jesuits in 1949. But he early on developed an interest in matters concerning the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches and spent his entire priesthood in the Byzantine Rite.

More

Wikipedia

Member of the Taft family

[Machiavelli]

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Long-Serving Times Book Critic, Dies at 84

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, a nationally influential literary critic for The New York Times for three decades, who wrote some 4,000 reviews and essays, mostly for the daily column Books of The Times, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 84.

His death, at the Milstein Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, was caused by complications of a stroke, his daughter, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, said.

In one of journalism’s most challenging jobs, Mr. Lehmann-Haupt was The Times’s senior daily book critic from 1969 to 1995, tackling two or three books a week and rendering judgments that could affect, for better or ill, literary careers as well as book sales. He was a critic until 2000.

Readers and colleagues called him a judicious, authoritative voice on fiction and a seemingly boundless array of history, biography, current events and other topics, with forays into Persian archaeology and fly fishing.

More

Wikipedia

[jmyrlefuller]

Composer Francis Lai dies at 86

The French composer, with hundreds of songs to his credit, is particularly noted for his scoring of films and television shows. His best-known work in the United States was the theme to the 1970 film Love Story.

Obituary from MSN

Wikipedia

! No longer available

[EasyAce]

Composer Francis Lai dies at 86

The French composer, with hundreds of songs to his credit, is particularly noted for his scoring of films and television shows. His best-known work in the United States was the theme to the 1970 film Love Story.

Obituary from MSN

Wikipedia

! No longer available

Before Love Story, it was A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et une Femme). You couldn't go anywhere in 1966 without hearing its theme, especially, at least six times a day . . .

! No longer available

. . . including by jazz legend Charlie Byrd . . .

! No longer available

[Gefn]

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Long-Serving Times Book Critic, Dies at 84

More

Wikipedia

I had to read him in college for several courses. RIP.

[jmyrlefuller]

Before Love Story, it was A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et une Femme). You couldn't go anywhere in 1966 without hearing its theme, especially, at least six times a day . . .

! No longer available

. . . including by jazz legend Charlie Byrd . . .

! No longer available

I always wondered who did that song or what it was called! I heard it several times as background music on TV back in the 1990s but never could figure it out. The first song I ever recognized as being in 5/4 time (though it seems to shift now that I hear the whole thing).

Now I know.

[Machiavelli]

Douglas Rain, Stratford Festival actor and voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, dies at 90

Douglas Rain passed away Sunday morning at the age of 90.

The actor, one of the pioneers of the Stratford Festival, is best known for his role in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rain was the voice of the sentient computer HAL.

More

Wikipedia

IMDb

[sneakypete]

Douglas Rain, Stratford Festival actor and voice of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, dies at 90

More

Wikipedia

IMDb

@Machiavelli

I can close my eyes and still hear his voice perfectly.

[Applewood]

HAL gave me the willies. 

Rest in peace, Mr. Rain.

[Right_in_Virginia]

@Machiavelli

I can close my eyes and still hear his voice perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mme2Aya_6Bc

! No longer available

Still creepy after all these years @sneakypete

[Suppressed]

I remember thinking I was so funny when I set Apple Macintosh error sound to "I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that."

Such great voice acting.

[Gefn]

I remember thinking I was so funny when I set Apple Macintosh error sound to "I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that."

Such great voice acting.

I did that too on my old Macintosh! I miss doing that with the new computers.

RIP

[Gefn]

IMHO best lines from 20th century movies
“Rosebud”
“Play it Sam”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that”

[EasyAce]

IMHO best lines from 20th century movies
“Rosebud”
“Play it Sam”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that”

Correction (ain't I a stinker?): If she can stand it, I can---play it!

Some other favourite lines from that century's movies:

He carries 92 credit cards, the minute anything happens to him America lights up!

I sleep in the nude. Au buffo! Winter or summer with the windows open. And because I may have to go to the potty or to the fridge in the middle of the night, and because I do not like to wear jammies which I don't own, anyway, unless you'd like to give yourself a cheap thrill or your daughter an advanced education, you'll keep your door closed. Them's my rules and regulations, how do ya like those apples?

Don't torture yourself, darling---that's my job.

Close your mouths, we are not codfish!

Heeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!

You don't need a nickname, you need a curve ball.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour?

Be proud of those wings, they're the only one you're gonna leave here with, Mayo-nnaise!

Well, I'm glad he cleared that up, because that crowd was about to buy Amway products!

All right, I'm cooler than you are, why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle!

[Smokin Joe]

IMHO best lines from 20th century movies
“Rosebud”
“Play it Sam”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that”

I liked "Round up the usual suspects!" (Casablanca)

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

21st Century: Tremors 6, Cold Day In Hell

Burt Gummer's about to finish off the monster. The DARPA Spooks try to stop him so they can turn it into a bio weapon.

"You, bunch of malevolent ineptiods." He tells them just before he hits the detonator.

[txradioguy]

R.I.P Stan Lee.  Passed away at age 95 after a long illness.

Just breaking on the news.

[edpc]

R.I.P Stan Lee.  Passed away at age 95 after a long illness.

Just breaking on the news.

Excelsior!

[jmyrlefuller]

R.I.P Stan Lee.  Passed away at age 95 after a long illness.

Just breaking on the news.

Stan Lee, last of the Silver Age comic book authors, dies at 95



Having begun his career in 1939, Stanley Lieber entered a field that had previously been dominated by what is now DC Comics. By the early 1960s, Lee's employer, then known as Atlas Comics, decided to take aim at DC's dominance of the field. With the help of Steve Ditko (who died earlier this year) and DC defector Jack Kirby, Atlas became Marvel Comics, creating a legion of more human, realistic superheroes, set in real cities (whereas DC based their characters in vaguely fictionalized representations like Gotham and Metropolis, Marvel bluntly set much of their comics in New York City). From this boom came Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, the X-Men, and several others that formed the basis of the Avengers, Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League. Marvel's willingness to confront communists and portray them as enemies when DC ignored them was a major factor in the rapid rise in Marvel's fortunes in the 1960s.

Lee eventually transitioned into the comic book industry’s most well-known and passionate public ambassador, appearing in cameo appearances in most of Marvel's many film and television adaptations. The characters Lee co-created and developed are believed to have earned enough money to have made him a billionaire, although he attests to have never made that much money and was embroiled in legal action for much of his later life.

Lee died of a pneumonia-related ‘‘medical emergency’’ in Los Angeles the morning of November 12.

Obituary from CNN

Wikipedia

IMDB

[Applewood]

From what I read Mr. Lee's last several months or longer weren't too good for him.  Lawsuits. allegations that managers and partners cheated him out of money, even accused his own daughter of abuse.  I don't know if the accusations were valid or if he had developed some kind of dementia and/or paranoia.  All in all, not a good way to go out. 

May Mr. Lee find peace in the afterlife.

[Gefn]

RIP MR Lee. Thanks for all the cameos on The Simpsons, Hells Kitchen, and all the other TV shows you were on in the last decade of your life. You made me laugh in those cameos.

[Free Vulcan]

Can't say Stan didn't live a full life, that's for sure. Had to be a kick to see his many creations come to life on the big screen and be involved in all that.

[Applewood]

I liked "Round up the usual suspects!" (Casablanca)

Casablanca is my favorite movie.  Great performances and some excellent lines.  This is my other favorite scene:


! No longer available

[verga]

Casablanca is my favorite movie.  Great performances and some excellent lines.  This is my other favorite scene:


! No longer available

Mine too.

[Cyber Liberty]

Stan Lee, Marvel Comics' Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95

Stan Lee, Marvel Comics' Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95

X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee's daughter, J.C. Lee, also confirmed his death.

Lee's final few years were tumultuous. After Joan, his wife of 69 years, died in July 2017, he sued executives at POW! Entertainment — a company he founded in 2001 to develop film, TV and video game properties — for $1 billion alleging fraud, then abruptly dropped the suit weeks later. He also sued his ex-business manager and filed for a restraining order against a man who had been handling his affairs. (Lee's estate is estimated to be worth as much as $70 million.) And in June 2018, it was revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department had been investigating reports of elder abuse against him.

[Smokin Joe]

Casablanca is my favorite movie.  Great performances and some excellent lines.  This is my other favorite scene:


! No longer available

Yes!

[Smokin Joe]

R.I.P Stan Lee.  Passed away at age 95 after a long illness.

Just breaking on the news.

I have few heroes, really, in a specific sense, but Stan Lee was one, not because he braved enemy fire or dragged people from burning buildings, but because he dared to let kids and ordinary people dream of being heroes, and that so often leads to heroes in real life.
That he stood against Communism when so many were silent in the entertainment industry (and Marvel Comics were, indeed, entertainment) just adds to his status, imho.
Besides, it was fun watching for him in cameos in the movies, too.
RIP, Mr. Lee, and thanks.

[Suppressed]

Let's not forget that Hillary was part of the fleecing of him...

from r/HillaryForPrison

https://www.reddit.com/r/HillaryForPrison/comments/5b1v1w/flashback_hillarys_scandal_with_stan_lee/

Lie down with dogs . . .

 

[mountaineer]

 Christian composer Kurt Kaiser, writer of 'Pass It On,' dies at 83
    By CARL HOOVER

Waco composer and pianist Kurt Kaiser, writer of familiar Christian songs as “Pass It On” and “Oh How He Loves You and Me,” died Monday at his Waco home after a long illness. He was 83.

Kaiser had a six-decade-long career in composing, playing, arranging and producing Christian music. His songs, found in dozens of contemporary hymnals and songbooks, are sung by millions of Christians around the world.  ...

Kaiser’s compositions number more than 300 copyrighted songs, many of which are regular fare in Sunday worship services, such as “The Lord Whom We Love,” “Pass It On,” “Oh How He Loves You And Me” and his popular arrangement of Doris Akers’ “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” His writing and recording, with 16 solo albums to his credit, earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers as well as election to the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.  ... More at Waco Tribune

[jmyrlefuller]

I just played Pass It On in church a couple weeks ago.

I may sound like an old-school scrooge saying this, but there's just no comparison between the songs written in the 20th century and those from the 21st. It's as if Chris Tomlin showed up on the scene and everything went to crap. Now we have nonsense like "Reckless Love" by Cory Asbury... reckless theology, reckless songwriting, an all-around wreck.