[tbr]

Robert Wallace (died 10/06/2014) was head director in the American Bridge Association and directed many tournaments in the American Contract Bridge League also. He was 67.

[jjbrr]

Oscar Taveras, Cardinals' slugger, only 22 years old. One of the MLB's brightest prospects. Too young; RIP

[barmar]

Tom Magliozzi, either Click or Clack of NPR's "Car Talk" program, at 77.

http://en.wikipedia....d_Ray_Magliozzi

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2014-November-03, 14:36, said:

Tom Magliozzi, either Click or Clack of NPR's "Car Talk" program, at 77.

http://en.wikipedia....d_Ray_Magliozzi

These guys provided a strong echo from my early life. In my adolescence the garage at my home had a pit. A group of us would work on our various cars. Those were very happy days. Not one of those cars would pass legal inspection today. Even back then the law insisted that I fix up my 47 Plymouth to pass inspection. Impossible, so I bought another, same year and model,for thirty-five bucks. It had a shot engine and did an engine transplant and junked the one that was in trouble with the cops.. Yep, very happy days.

My best wishes to his brother and others.

[mike777]

Mike Nichols


He directed many great movies including my all time favorite.

[kenberg]

mike777, on 2014-November-20, 22:04, said:

Mike Nichols


He directed many great movies including my all time favorite.

This is the first I heard of it, I just got up. I clicked over to the Wikipedia. I admit I was not fully aware just how large his life really was. Among other errors, I thought he was, at least at one time married to Elaine May. In the Wik article, they have this comment on the Nichols-May years:

Quote

They were invited to audition for Jack Rollins, who later became Woody Allen's manager and producer, and he was impressed, stating: "Their work was so startling, so new, as fresh as could be. I was stunned by how really good they were, actually as impressed by their acting technique as by their comedy. . . I thought, My God, these are two people writing hilarious comedy on their feet!"

Don't ask me to recall any of their presentations, it's too far back, but the quote above from Rollins exactly captures the way I remember it. They were great, and they were not like anyone else. I see that they worked with Shelley Berman, another great.

Anyway, thanks for the note.

[barmar]

Last night's Daily Show "Moment of Zen" (a little bit that they before the closing credits -- usually some reporter or politician doing something foolish, but occasionally a tribute) was a clip from an old Nichols & May routine.

Nichols is also notable for being one of 17 "EGOTs" -- people who have won all 4 of the entertainment industry's major awards: Emmy (TV), Grammy (audio recording), Oscar (movies), and Tony (Broadway). He also has the most of these awards among EGOTs for whom all the awards were competitive (Barbara Streisand has 2 more awards, but her Tony was an honorary "Star of the Decade").

[Trinidad]

Joe Cocker

Rik

[mike777]

Donna Douglas, the actress most known for playing the giddy, goofy Elly May Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies," has died at age 81 according to several reports.

It cannot be overstated what a phenomenon "The Beverly Hillbillies" was. Not only was the comedy the #1 series in America for its first two seasons, but the episode "The Giant Jackrabbit" remains one of the single most watched half-hours in sitcom history. Douglas was essential to the show's rollicking mix, and she remained friends with "Hillbillies" star Buddy Ebsen until his death



https://tv.yahoo.com...-203600373.html

[ArtK78]

Ernie Banks. Let's play two!

[Aberlour10]

Edgar Froese in the age of 70, the leader of Tangerine Dream.

[Cyberyeti]

New romantic pioneer Steve Strange http://en.wikipedia....i/Steve_Strange

[y66]

David Carr, Times critic and champion of media.



Excerpt from The Fall and Rise of Media (November 2009):

Quote

That feeling of age, of a coming sunset, is tough to avoid in all corners of traditional publishing. Earlier in November, the New York comptroller said that employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000, a year when the media industry here seemed at the height of its powers.

I arrived in New York that same year as part of Inside.com, a digital news site conceived to cover a media space that was converging and morphing into something wholly new. The site covered the mainstream media’s efforts to come to grips with new realities and efforts by new players to cash in on emerging technology.

Few of us could have conceived that in the next decade some of the reigning titans of media would be routed. Profligate dot-com ad money that had fattened print went away in a digital wipeout, and when digital media came back, it was to dine on the mainstream media rather than engorge it. After 2000, jobs in traditional media industries declined at a rate of about 2.5 percent annually and then went into a dive in 2008 or so. (Inside.com, an idea before its time — hey, let’s charge for high-quality, business-oriented content — disappeared after about 18 months.)

...

For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.

Certain stalwart brands will survive and even thrive because of a new scarcity of quality content for niche audiences that demand more than generic information. The chip that was implanted in me when I arrived at this newspaper — you might call it New York Times Exceptionalism — leads me to conclude that this organization will be one of those, but the insurgency continues apace.

Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.

So what do we get instead? The future, which is not a bad deal if you ignore all the collateral gore. Young men and women are still coming here to remake the world, they just won’t be stopping by the human resources department of Condé Nast to begin their ascent.

For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.

Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.

[GreenMan]

y66, on 2015-February-13, 00:02, said:

David Carr, Times critic and champion of media.

David Carr was one of the very few people whose insight into media and culture I valued most highly. Often in trying to figure something out I would hope he had something to say about it, from which I was sure to gain illumination. Just last night I was quoting his article on Brian Williams and Jon Stewart in conversation.

[mike777]

Leonard Nimoy who played Mr. Spock has died at 83


The Virginian-Pilot
© February 27, 2015

LOS ANGELES

Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock in "Star Trek" and subsquent films has died at 83, The New York Times is reporting.

[mikeh]

one of my favourite blogs (not that I have many....in fact it may be the only blog I read on a regular basis) is pharyngula....not a site the religious amongst us would enjoy....has a post on him and a link to aspects of who he was besides playing spock.

From the little I knew of him, he always seemed to be a 'good guy'.

[y66]

Yasar Kemal, Master Turkish Novelist and Strident Political Critic

Quote

“He is one of the few writers who can deftly blend the compassion and love he feels for his characters with astute irony, morbid criticism and sharp social observations,” said one of them, Elif Shafak. “In each and every book, he touches and lifts up the beauty of becoming a free, soul-searching human individual, even in the most feudal social settings. He is the architect of unforgettable literary heroes and a beacon for writers of the generations that followed him.”

In “They Burn the Thistles,” a villager who shelters the outlaw hero, Slim Memed, gazes at him as he sleeps and describes him in terms that might apply to the novelist himself.

“In that man there’s a brave heart, a good brain, and great humanity,” he tells his wife. “He’s so big-hearted that both the aghas and the government are afraid of him. Terrified of him. There were 500 bandits in the mountains, but that didn’t bother the government. Why not? Because they were not generous, big-hearted men.”

[mikeh]

Terry Pratchett

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

[jjbrr]

mikeh, on 2015-March-12, 17:44, said:

Terry Pratchett

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

Quote

The sun goes down upon the Ankh,
And slowly, softly fades -
Across the Drum; the Royal Bank;
The River-Gate; the Shades.

A stony circle's closed to elves;
And here, where lines are blurred,
Between the stacks of books on shelves,
A quiet 'Ook' is heard.

A copper steps the city-street
On paths he's often passed;
The final march; the final beat;
The time to rest at last.

He gives his badge a final shine,
And sadly shakes his head -
While Granny lies beneath a sign
That says: 'I aten't dead.'

The Luggage shifts in sleep and dreams;
It's now. The time's at hand.
For where it's always night, it seems,
A timer clears of sand.

And so it is that Death arrives,
When all the time has gone...
But dreams endure, and hope survives,
And Discworld carries on.

[hrothgar]

mikeh, on 2015-March-12, 17:44, said:

Terry Pratchett

I haven't read many of his books. I had the immense pleasure of listening to a speech he gave late last year (I saw it on television) where he wrote the words and they were delivered by Tony Robinson, the actor who plays Baldrick in the Blackadder series. Pratchett was already suffering from a form of Alzheimers that made it impossible for him to deliver that which he had written, but Robinson was superb, with Pratchett sitting nearby. He already had his death planned......sitting in his garden, with a drink (I forget which) and listening to his favourite music. I don't know if he was able to end his life that way, but I surely hope so. He was a good man...and a wise, and very, very funny man.

I loved Pratchett's work. I bought Pyramids and Wyrd Sisters for my nephew when he was but three...